IPP Ormat Technologies has signed seven-year tolling agreements with optimiser Equilibrium Energy for two BESS projects in the ERCOT, Texas market.
The two companies have agreed the tolls for the Lower Rio 60MW/120MWh and Bird Dog 60MW/120MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
Both projects are expected to come online in Q4 2025 and are the first for which Ormat has secured tolling deals in the ERCOT market. The firm said the deals allowed it to proceed with the construction of a third project, the 100MW/200MWh Louisa project.
Tolls are a type of deal where a company, in this case Equilibrium, pays an asset owner, in this case Ormat, a fixed fee to rent and trade the BESS in the energy market.
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Doron Blachar, CEO of of Ormat Technologies, said: “By securing fixed, long-term revenues, we have de-risked approximately 50% of our strategically expanded Texas storage portfolio, aligning with our long-term plan to improve segment profitability and accelerate our growth.”
The firm also recently signed a resource adequacy (RA) agreement for a BESS in California, which is akin to a toll in that it is a long-term, guaranteed source of revenues. Such long-term agreements are less common in ERCOT, however.
Tolls are growing in popularity in the energy storage market, long-used in US and Australia but beginning to emerge in the UK too, with recent deals from asset owners BW ESS and Gresham House.
