Clean energy owner-operators Apex Clean Energy and esVolta have commissioned and put into commercial operation BESS projects in the ERCOT, Texas market, while second life BESS firm B2U has started building one in the state.
esVolta put 1GWh of Texas BESS online
The three battery energy storage system (BESS) projects total 490MW/980MWh and will amount to roughly 4% of the 12.2GW that grid operator ERCOT expects to have online by July 2025, esVolta said.
Texas is the second-largest BESS market in the US after California, and BESS has proven key in both to mitigating the risk of grid outages during the summer peak energy demand periods.
Desert Willow is 150MW/300MWh BESS in Ellis County, operational since May 2025. Anole is a 240MW/480MWh BESS in Dallas County, online since July. Both supply energy to the grid supporting Dallas, one of Texas’ largest cities.
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Burksol is a 100MW/200MWh system in Dickens County, operational since March, which connects to the grid operator by Wind Energy Transmission of Texas.
Saber Power provided engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) on the Desert Willow and Burksol projects, while Quanta Infrastructure Solutions Group was contracted for Anole.
EsVolta secured US$185 million in financing for the three projects in May 2024 before completing a preferred equity transaction with investor Captona worth US$243 million in January 2025.
ESN Premium reported exclusively on another ERCOT project the firm acquired from developer Black Mountain Energy Storage earlier this year.
BESS projects in ERCOT still derive a majority of revenues from the state’s huge ancillary services market. Energy-Storage.news has recently heard in detail from optimiser Grid Beyond about the market dynamics in both Texas and California, via recent guest blogs and interviews for ESN Premium, the latter published this week.
Apex commissions wind in Chicago and Illinois, BESS in Texas
In concurrent news, Apex Clean Energy has put two wind projects in Chicago and Illinois into operation alongside a BESS project in Texas.
The firm has put the 100MW/200MWh Angelo Storage project in Tom Green County, Texas, into commercial operation. In the same announcement, it declared its identically-sized Great Kiskadee Storage project in Hidalgo County as operational, but this was already announced separately in February.
It finalised US$150 million in financing for both projects in May 2024.
B2U starts building second life BESS, first outside California
In related news, second life BESS firm B2U has launched construction on its third major project using repurposed electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
Following two projects in California of 12MWh and 25MWh each, B2U has started building a project in Bexar County, east of San Antonio, with a total anticipated capacity of 24MWh. It will be fully operational and transacting with the Texas grid later this year, B2U said.
The Bexar Corilla system will use 500 EV battery packs that have reached automotive end-of-life across 21 cabinets using the firm’s proprietary hardware and software design. It will connect to the grid network of municipal utility CPS Energy.
“As EV pack repurposing gains acceptance as a preferred source of batteries for the large and high-growth grid and industrial energy storage markets, B2U will continue to lead by deploying our bankable, safe and profitable technology to the grid, and expanding to industrial customers,” said Freeman Hall, CEO of B2U, who discussed the firm’s 12MWh project in California with Energy-Storage.news when it went online.
The company expects to deploy three additional BESS projects using repurposed EV batteries in Texas totalling 100MWh which, combined with its California projects, should mean it has a total second life portfolio of 150MWh by mid-2026.
