Park County is about to become home to one of Colorado’s largest battery storage facilities. Blattner Energy held a hiring and subcontractor open house June 10 at the Park County offices in Fairplay, the clearest public signal yet that construction on the 200-megawatt South Park Battery Energy Storage System near Hartsel moves forward this summer.
The project is owned by RWE Clean Energy, LLC, the North American arm of German energy company RWE. The facility will sit on 36 acres of privately owned land approximately six miles north of Hartsel, west of Highway 9. It will consist of 120 Tesla 2XL Megapacks covering just over six acres of the site. A 0.33-mile transmission line connects the facility to the existing Hartsel Substation, feeding stored energy into Xcel Energy’s grid as part of the utility’s push to add 600 megawatts of storage capacity by 2030.
RWE submitted its Conditional Use Permit application to Park County in August 2024. The Park County Board of County Commissioners approved the project November 12, 2024 with ten conditions. The final condition requires the CUP to expire upon the facility’s decommissioning. Adjacent landowners in the Thousand Peaks Ranch area opposed the project during the public comment period, citing industrial character incompatible with the surrounding ranch landscape.
The project will generate an estimated $9.44 million in property taxes over its operational life, with $154,797 allocated annually to Park County School District RE-2 — a district that receives no state revenue and is funded entirely through local property taxes. RWE also committed to two underground 30,000-gallon water storage tanks for the Hartsel Fire Protection District, reviewed and approved by the district before the CUP was issued.
Blattner Energy is the construction contractor. The Minnesota-based firm builds utility-scale battery storage, wind, and solar projects across the western United States. Commercial operations are scheduled for December 2027.
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