Developer-operator GridStor has acquired a 200MW/800MWh in-development battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Oklahoma, US, from Black Mountain Energy Storage (BMES).
The Southwest Power Pool (SPP), the Regional Transmission Organisation (RTO) managing electric grid operations across 14 states including Oklahoma, indicated an urgent need for new power resources to go online by 2030 to support electric system reliability and demand from data centres and other industrial customers.
The newly acquired BESS will be built in two phases in Eastern Oklahoma to support multiple data centres already operational or in development in the area and placing increasing demands on the regional power infrastructure.
The project also marks GridStor’s second successful BESS acquisition over the past year. In 2024, the company acquired a 220MW/440MWh standalone BESS project in Galveston County, Texas, which began construction in October.
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Oklahoma has recently been active in the renewable energy market. In April of last year, Green Li-ion, a Singapore-headquartered startup, put into operation what it claims to be the first recycling facility in North America to turn black mass directly into precursor cathode active material (pCAM) in Atoka, Oklahoma.
The state is also looking at potential investments from the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) through a US$1.6 billion funding of AEP Transmission projects, part of US$23 billion in loans announced by the office.
GridStor, which has the backing of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, started commercial operations of its first project, the 60MW/160MWh Goleta BESS facility in California, in late 2023.
Vendor BMES takes projects through from origination to then ‘flip’ i.e., selling them on to investors or other developers which then take it into commercial operation.
In 2022, it sold a 700MW portfolio of BESS projects in the ERCOT, Texas, market to investment banking group UBS, before another 490MW ERCOT portfolio sale to Peregrine Energy Solutions in early 2023. A few months later it got regulatory approval for a 300MW project in Wisconsin.
More recently, in August 2024, BMES had another project, a 200MW BESS in the ERCOT, Texas market acquired by IPP Vitis Energy, which is expected to begin commercial operations in late 2026.
Chris Taylor, CEO of GridStor said of the acquired BESS project: “Battery storage is a scalable and near-term solution to provide reliability to the SPP system and its large customers.”
“Batteries provide energy to stabilise the power system and meet hours of greatest demand every day in multiple regions across the US. This acquisition demonstrates GridStor’s commitment to rapidly adding battery energy storage to the SPP grid to support the growing needs of its residents and businesses.”
