If the Texas energy crisis taught us something, is that the state has some serious infrastructure problems that state regulators are prepared to correct. Fortunately, everyone’s favorite high profile Twitter troll, Elon Musk, you may have a plan: a giant battery ready to connect more than 16,000 the energy value of the houses in the state’s electricity grid.
Bloomberg first reported the news on Monday that a little-known Tesla subsidiary called Gambit Energy Storage LLC had started work on a large energy storage facility in Angleton, Texas, a small suburb south of Houston. An Ercot employee said the battery has a “proposed commercial operation date” as of June 1.
The battery in question was built to hold about 100 megawatts of power. To offer some perspective here, the Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that a single megawatt would be enough to supply about 164 households across the country – meaning that the Gambit project could, hypothetically, supply about 16,400 households. What may not be enough to cover the close to 3 million families that lost energy during last month’s cold wave, but it’s still a significant number of homes with a significant number of people who don’t be left with icicles dripping from their ceilings or stuck face to face life-threatening temperatures no water the next time a cold spell hits the state.
Before Tesla took over, the Gambit project was initially run by a non-Tesla entity, Plus Power LLC. Some of initial pitch documents Plus Power filed with the state say that the battery center would charge with electricity offered from a connection to a nearby 138 kV substation and discharge electricity into the grid through that same connection. According to this step, the battery would be charged from this network when energy prices are low, that is, during the peak wind and solar production– and then discharge when there is a power failure.
When charged, the battery can help start the local electrical system, “providing power to ‘start’ the electric generators,” explains the pitch deck. Not only that, but it would be emission-free and well out of sight of nearby houses, thanks to a handful of oaks and other “substantial natural vegetation”.
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We contacted Tesla for comment and will update when we have a response.
While it is unclear when the Gambit project changed hands, we know that Tesla has been trying to get into the mega-battery game for some time. Iin 2017, the tram assembler unwound a 100 MW battery park in South Australia that was then announced as “the largest lithium-ion battery in the world”, which it was powered thanks to electricity generated by a neighboring wind farm. Meanwhile, we’ve seen Tesla’s gains from battery and solar deployments reach records Over the past year.
It is also worth mentioning that Musk has a very personal stake in the Texas grid, since he moved to Austin in late 2020 and is starting to quickly open new Tesla factories across the state. At the height of Texas power cuts last month, he rightly shouted Ercot, the Texas Electric Reliability Council, for “not winning that R.” Let’s hope that the Gambit project is a little more reliable than some of the Tesla batteries that we’ve seen in the past.