Developer SMT Energy, with utility CenterPoint Energy and construction company Irby, have broken ground on the 160MW/320MWh SMT Houston IV battery energy storage system (BESS) in Texas, US.
Located in the Houston zone of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market, the BESS is expected to be completed in early July.
Irby is acting as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor. SMT owns and is developing the project, while CenterPoint serves as the interconnecting utility.
SMT says the BESS will contribute to ERCOT’s ancillary services market, provide grid-balancing services and help mitigate load volatility and renewable intermittency.
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Tony Gardner, SVP & chief customer officer at CenterPoint, said of the project:
“At CenterPoint, we recently completed nearly 90% of our overall grid resiliency improvements. This is one more action we are taking to build a more resilient and reliable grid to better serve our customers.”
In February, Energy-Storage.news reported that SMT secured a US$135 million funding for SMT Houston IV.
Macquarie Group and KeyBanc Capital Markets jointly arranged the US$100 million project financing. Macquarie’s Commodities and Global Markets division also invested in preferred equity and will sell the project’s investment tax credits (ITCs), totalling about US$62 million.
Equipment for the BESS will be provided by system integrator FlexGen, which will also use its ‘HybridOS’ energy management system (EMS) for the project.
According to SMT, following the closure of SMT Houston IV, the company now operates eighteen utility-scale BESS assets, totalling approximately 500MWh, in operation or construction.
Additionally, the company has a 2GWh pipeline of BESS projects in ERCOT and the Southwest Power Pool, aiming for commercial operation by 2030. It has also collaborated on projects in the state with investor SUSI Partners, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.
Irby, founded in 1946 and based in Mississippi, claims to be one of the first construction companies in the industry to construct BESS projects.
The company worked with Florida Power and Light on what was then the world’s largest BESS, the 409MW/900MWh Manatee BESS.
Irby says since that time, it has built over 30 BESS sites and has more than 20 BESS sites under construction or contract.
