Base Power, a Texas-based home battery company, has unveiled an ambitious plan to reshape the energy grid using small-scale, distributed batteries.
According to Canary Media, the "battery juggernaut" is spending some of the $1 billion it raised in October to build out one of the largest home battery fleets in America for a utility cooperative outside Dallas-Fort Worth.
Battery companies and solar projects have made progress competing with fuel-reliant power plants, but they often run into a key limitation: scale. Base Power aims to tackle that challenge directly by building out 100 megawatts of distributed home battery capacity over the next two years.
That capacity is roughly equivalent to a natural gas peaker plant. But while building a gas plant can take about five years, Base Power said it can reach the same level in just two years.
Tim Pianta, the company's head of utility partnerships, told Canary Media that it will partner with homeowners to install each system in about a day.
Homeowners who partner with Base under this program can get whole-home backup power for a $695 installation fee and a $19 monthly subscription. That's significantly lower than the typical $15,000 to $20,000 cost of a standard battery system.
While this deal will only be available for members of the Denton County Electric Cooperative who partnered with Base Power, a battery backup can be a worthwhile investment for your home's energy security.
EnergySage, in collaboration with the battery experts at Qmerit, can connect you with competitive installation quotes to ensure you're getting the best deal and system based on your home and budget.
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As U.S. electricity costs continue to rise, Base Power's approach gives the Denton County Electric Cooperative, which serves more than 330,000 electric meters, a faster and more affordable way to expand capacity.
"That's a core value proposition for them: driving down costs of their power supply," Pianta told Canary Media. "And then, in tandem with that is the ability to offer members dramatically more affordable resiliency than they would otherwise be able to get."
To reach its 100-megawatt target, Base Power will need more than 5,000 homeowners to opt into the program, but the company says it's confident it can meet that goal.
"Base has been building up for a long time now, both the supply capacity to deliver that type of resource and the deployments engine to develop that local capacity really quickly," Pianta said.
While it will take time to see whether Base Power's model will succeed, homeowners don't have to wait for their utility to take control of their home's energy security.
If you want to avoid peak electricity rates and keep your home powered during outages but are hesitant about the upfront cost of a whole-home battery, check out Pila's Mesh home battery.
Its briefcase-sized, plug-and-play batteries are priced at a fraction of the cost of a whole-home system and can keep vital appliances running when the lights go out.
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