Tesla acquires 100-MW battery in Texas amid talk of grid reforms – Bloomberg

Tesla Inc. has acquired the 100-MW Gambit Battery Storage project under development in Brazoria County, Texas, from private battery storage developer Plus Power, Bloomberg Green reported March 8.

Plus Power, who was one of a number of developers selected in a solicitation in 2020 to provide battery storage technology in Hawaii, confirmed to Bloomberg that it had sold the Gambit battery project to a third party. Tesla did not respond to multiple requests on the transaction by Bloomberg for comment.

The Gambit project, in Angleton, Texas, south of Houston and near the Gulf of Mexico, has a proposed commercial operation date of June 1, according to the Bloomberg report, and will be located in the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas Inc. balancing area. The transaction comes on the heels of the catastrophic electric grid failure in Texas in February that left millions without power and pushed power prices to rise to unprecedented levels.

Tesla added nearly 1,600 MWh of energy storage capacity in the fourth quarter of 2020 and has a large project under development in California due to be in operation later this year.

ERCOT has about 2,100 MW of battery storage and 35,000 MW of solar and wind in advanced stages of development to be connected to its grid in the next couple of years.