GMP’s planned mobile batteries could keep neighborhoods powered after storms and help lower electricity costs for customers beyond the five proposed communities.
A home generator keeps one house running when the power goes out. Now imagine the utility bringing that kind of backup to a cluster of homes: a trailer full of batteries that could keep the lights on while crews repair a storm-damaged power line.
That is the idea behind a Vermont project involving Green Mountain Power and Waterbury-born NOMAD. When the project was announced in 2023, GMP and the company said each unit would be capable of powering about 50 homes for 10 hours. NOMAD announced Aug. 26 that the U.S. Department of Energy had cleared the roughly $19 million project to enter construction, with up to eight units expected at five sites in GMP territory.
You would not necessarily have to live near one to benefit. When the batteries are not needed for an outage, GMP can use their stored electricity during periods of high demand, reducing how much expensive power it buys. GMP says savings from its broader battery network benefit all its customers. A GMP customer in Williamstown could share that cost benefit even if a trailer were stationed in Barre.
The outage protection is more specific: which homes stay powered depends on where GMP connects a battery, the condition of the local lines and how much electricity those homes need. The project offers a way to provide backup to groups of homes; it does not guarantee coverage for every household in a participating town.
The August announcement does not name the sites. A 2024 federal record does: Newbury, Pownal, Barre, Bennington and St. Johnsbury.
What It Is
The mobile battery does two jobs, and unlike a battery bolted to a pad it moves — a fairground in July, a village in December, possibly another county the night your town goes dark.
- Backup when the power fails. When a line goes down, the battery can keep a small section of grid running while crews repair it.
- Savings on the days power costs the most. During periods of high demand, such as heat waves and cold snaps, GMP can use stored electricity to reduce how much power it buys at high prices. In 2023, GMP reported that its battery network saved customers up to $3 million a year during those peaks.
What It Looks Like
GMP has already done this once. During a scheduled six-hour shutdown in Essex in 2023, utility engineers calculated the power the Twincraft Skincare plant needed, then used a NOMAD battery to run a small section of line so the plant kept working while crews worked around it.
Here is how it could work in one of the five towns. Freezing rain brings a limb down across the line into a village center at suppertime, and everyone downstream normally waits in the dark until a bucket truck gets up an iced road. With a battery parked nearby, GMP would cut an undamaged stretch of circuit off from the rest of the line and let the battery carry it while the crew works the dead section. A cluster of homes, or the fire station, could stay on. Ten hours covers a lot of overnight repairs, though not a multi-day outage without a recharge.
The 2023 plan also called for EV charging in each unit, so residents could charge cars during an outage. The August announcement does not say whether that is still in it.
Where the Town Names Come From
The five names come from DOE’s environmental review record, signed in May 2024 under DE-OE0000952, the award number the August announcement cites. It lists St. Johnsbury as the primary project location and names GMP as a subrecipient, meaning the utility gets part of the federal award for its share of the work. The announcement does not say whether those five locations are still the sites.
The record says only “Barre, VT,” without saying whether that means Barre City or Barre Town, which are separate municipalities.
All five were picked as Justice40 communities, a federal policy that aimed to send 40 percent of the benefits of certain clean-energy investments to places a federal screening tool scored as disadvantaged on income, energy costs and climate risk. The Trump administration ended Justice40 in January 2025; the project continued.
Who Builds Them
Waterbury is still home to NOMAD’s engineering staff and the center that monitors every unit it has deployed. The filing lists 18 full-time employees, with plans for about 25 by year’s end.
Where the units get put together is less clear. The filing says a contract manufacturer, CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, assembles NOMAD’s systems in Montreal and Binghamton, N.Y. NOMAD’s website still says its systems are “Engineered and built in Vermont.”
The Company Behind the Project
On July 1, NOMAD was bought through a merger by LIXTE Biotechnology Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed cancer-drug company in Boca Raton, Florida. The combined company renamed itself NOMAD Power Solutions, kept the Florida headquarters and now pitches its batteries to utilities and AI data centers.
The merger required NOMAD to file its own books with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and those arrived last week: audited 2025 figures, unaudited ones for early 2026.
- Sales quadrupled in 2025, to $9.4 million from $2.3 million.
- Sales then dropped sharply. NOMAD took in $621,000 in the first six months of 2026, against $6.6 million in the same months of 2025 — nine cents for every dollar a year earlier. The filing does not say why.
- Customers have paid in advance. NOMAD reported $8.8 million in deferred revenue on June 30 — payments received for contractual obligations it had not yet completed.
- It was nearly out of cash. NOMAD had $170,000 on hand June 30, the day before the merger closed, and $156,000 at the end of 2025 — less than the $225,000 a Vermont electrical supplier sued it over in December for unpaid invoices. The filing says the supplier filed a satisfaction of judgment in August, stating the debt was paid.
- The merger brought in $16.5 million, some of it used to pay off loans carrying 15 percent interest.
One number needs clarification. NOMAD reports a net loss of $153.6 million for the first half of 2026, startling for a company this size. About $148.6 million of it — nearly 97 percent — came from non-cash accounting charges tied to warrants, which give investors the right to buy stock at a set price. Its operating loss was $2.9 million, and its operations used $1.7 million in cash.
NOMAD’s accountants attached a going-concern warning to the 2025 statements, the flag raised when there is substantial doubt a company can keep operating another year. The company says its cash and customer payments should carry it through 2026, that it will need more money by then, and that it has no committed source yet.
The corporate reshuffle is not finished. A stockholder vote on converting the merger’s preferred shares into common stock was adjourned Sept. 4 without any business conducted and reconvenes Oct. 2, to give the company time to finish its Nasdaq listing application.
How the Federal Money Flows
The $9.5 million is not a check up front. It is a cooperative agreement, which reimburses eligible costs after they are spent and submitted, covering about half the project. The other half is a non-federal share, and the filings and federal records reviewed for this story do not spell out how it is split.
As of this week, the federal spending database showed $3.68 million paid out, about 39 cents of every federal dollar committed. The agreement is currently scheduled to end Sept. 3, 2027.
Eight trailers will not storm-proof Vermont. But this is a demonstration project, and if these get built, five towns find out whether a battery that can be driven where it’s needed beats one bolted down where it isn’t — and the rest of the state gets the answer without paying for it.