Dive Brief:

• South Central Texas cooperative Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative has partnered with distributed energy developer Base Power on a 2-MW virtual power plant that will provide residential customers with electricity in the event of a blackout, while also allowing the utility to use home batteries for price arbitrage and transmission cost management.
• The battery systems are installed in new homes constructed by Lennar and will be operated directly by GVEC using Base Power’s proprietary software platform.
• In the future, GVEC and Base Power will work together to qualify the aggregated battery capacity in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ aggregated distributed energy resource, or ADER, pilot program, Gary Coke, GVEC power supply manager, said in an email. The batteries will be owned by Base Power.

Dive Insight:

The virtual power plant builds on Base Power’s ongoing collaboration with Lennar to install batteries in new homes.

“GVEC has no direct relationship with our members in relation to this program,” Coke said. “The member selects the system as an option on the home and as a part of that selection acknowledges GVEC has the right to control the system, and we compensate Base for the exclusive right to access the batteries.”

The program has already begun, with nine battery systems installed for just over 100 kW of capacity and 225 kWh of energy, Coke said. “We expect to reach 20 systems by the end of July.” 

GVEC is already operating the installed batteries for transmission cost reduction during the summer and will continue to do so through September, corresponding to ERCOT’s 4CP program managing peak demand. The cooperative will also regularly operate the batteries for price arbitrage during periods of high pricing in the ERCOT market, Coke said. And the utility will work with Base Power to qualify the batteries for ADER.

ADER launched in 2022 with a goal to harness 80 MW of flexible resources, primarily batteries, on the ERCOT grid. The program got off to a slow start, with a complicated process of registering batteries identified as one stumbling block. Changes have been made to expand the program, however.

“We are in the process of qualifying our fleet for ADER. Our batteries provide value to GVEC before ADER qualification, but once qualified, will be able to contribute increased value to the co-op,” Base Power CEO Zach Dell said in an email.

The battery components come from third parties, with final assembly done in Austin, Dell said. “All software running on the device managing command and control has been designed and developed by Base. Our next generation battery will be a fully Base designed and manufactured (here in Austin) product, which we expect to start installing in the first half of next year.”