Polaris Point at Naval Base Guam is home to five fast-attack submarines, including the USS Jefferson City, seen here returning to Guam on Feb. 11, 2025. (James Caliva/U.S. Navy)
A joint venture between a U.S. and Japanese construction company has secured a $97 million Defense Department contract to build energy storage facilities aimed at shielding the U.S. Navy on Guam from power outages.
Granite Construction Inc., of Watsonville, Calif., and Obayashi Corp., of Tokyo, will build a 17,000-square-foot facility to house a battery storage system at Naval Base Guam’s Polaris Point, home to five nuclear-powered fast-attack submarines with Submarine Squadron 15.
The project will also include a microgrid controller, with construction scheduled to begin March 20 and completion expected in June 2028, according to a March 10 news release from Granite.
“Granite remains committed to advancing solutions that support the Navy’s mission and contribute to a more sustainable and reliable energy infrastructure,” the company said in its news release.
With this project, the joint venture has secured more than $500 million in DOD contracts on Guam, including more than $404 million at Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, since 2017.
The battery energy storage system, or BESS, will provide “power resilience” in the event of an outage and is the first microgrid project to incorporate such a system, according to experts at Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Marianas.
“The project’s microgrid controller will be integrated with the BESS, with capability to connect to other Navy distributed energy resources,” NAVFAC Marianas said in a Friday email from spokesman Corwin Colbert.
It will also be interconnected with the existing power grid, allowing it “to provide clean power to the future Naval facilities,” according to Granite’s news release.
The project is part of a broader DOD effort to improve “energy efficiency, resiliency and reliability” through microgrids, new technology, and renewable energy, according to the command.
In January 2024, the Pentagon surveyed Guam as a potential site for a microreactor as part of Project Pele, an initiative exploring small, mobile nuclear reactors capable of generating 1 to 5 megawatts for military applications, Pacific Daily News reported at the time. The survey team visited sites across the U.S., though the Pentagon had no definitive plans to place a microreactor on Guam, the report said.
In September, the Navy announced a one-year electrical microgrid study for its four public shipyards to assess the technical, economic and environmental feasibility of microgrids as part of its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, according to a Sept. 26 NAVFAC news release.
“This study is foundational to providing energy resilience at our naval shipyards,” Capt. Luke Greene, the program’s manager, said in the release. “Off-grid survivability is critical to maintain the shipyards’ operations under adverse conditions and deliver ships and submarines back to the fleet on time.”
