Dive Brief:
- Spearmint Energy announced Thursday its Revolution 300 megawatt hour grid-scale battery storage project had been completed and brought online in the Texas energy market. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the independent membership-based nonprofit that manages and operates Texas’ electrical grid, will be responsible for managing the market and distributing power.
- Despite Texas’ status as a Republican stronghold, the state has also emerged as a national leader in renewable energy generation. Spearmint said it utilized an investment tax structure in the Inflation Reduction Act to help fund the project.
- The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday U.S. battery energy storage capacity is now expected to nearly double in 2024, as growth of the battery storage energy industry is essential to enable the continued buildout of renewable energy capacity.
Dive Insight:
The West Texas battery energy storage system, built in partnership with construction firm Mortenson, is Spearmint’s debut grid-scale project and will have 150 MW and 300 MWh of capacity. Spearmint said the Revolution system is among the largest grid-scale energy storage projects in the United States.
The energy company said the project was completed on budget and on-schedule, with the help of a $92 million tax equity investment last October from Greenprint Capital Management. Spearmint said that funding was one of the first times the Investment Tax Credit structure, included among the Inflation Reduction Act’s $369 billion in clean energy spending, was used for a standalone battery project.
Mortenson provided the project a 34-person workforce, who worked an estimated 42,000 hours in order to install the project’s 134 battery containers, according to the press release. Sungrow provided Revolution’s 6,432 battery modules and 45 power conversion system units.
“[Spearmint] look[s] forward to supporting Texas’ growing demand for electricity – particularly in the face of climate change and rising natural gas and oil prices – for years to come,” Andrew Waranch, Spearmint’s founder, president and CEO, said in the press release.
While Revolution becomes Spearmint’s first operational project, the company purchased a portfolio of three other battery storage projects in Texas last March. Those projects, still under development, are 300 MW each and known as Nomadic.
The financial terms and former developer were not disclosed, but — without naming the company — Spearmint said at the time it had acquired the 900 MW portfolio from one of the largest developers and operators of clean energy projects in the nation. That project will also be managed by ERCOT once operational, and, with the Revolution and Nomadic systems, Spearmint is one of the largest battery storage companies in the state.
Texas has had issues with reliability, most notably during the February 2021 winter storm that led at least 137 deaths during power outages. The state hit peak demand last June during a sustained triple-digit heat wave, but the grid sustained itself, in part due to its renewable energy capacity.
In EIA’s latest projections for the battery storage market, the agency estimated national capacity will grow 89% in 2024 to reach 30 GW. As battery storage projects are often co-sited with wind and solar energy projects, EIA estimates Texas will add 3.2 GW of capacity this year to support its large and still-growing renewable energy portfolio.
Texas was far and away the top wind energy producing state in 2022 and generated the second-most solar power, behind California, according to the EIA. California is estimated to add the most battery storage capacity of any state this year, with an estimated 7.3 GW coming online.
