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In less than a year , Base Power has grown from a stealthy startup to one of the orotund battery fleet in Texas .
Now the company has raised $ 200 million to fund a rapid expanding upon , including loads more megawatt - hours of battery storage and plans for a domestic electric battery manufactory .
The Series B round was led by Addition , Andreessen Horowitz , Lightspeed Venture Partners , and Valor Equity Partners . Altimeter , Terrain , Thrive Ventures , and Trust Ventures participate .
Backup battery are nothing new — Tesla has been sellingits Powerwallfor well-nigh a decade — but Base Power have the modeling to new territory . First , its bombardment are massive , 25 or 50 kilowatt - hours , almost three-fold or quadruple a single Powerwall , severally . Then there ’s the cost : Base Power charge just $ 595 or $ 995 up front look on the capacity , while a single Powerwall will run about $ 15,000 or more before incentives .
The hitch ? client have to commit to buying electrical energy from the caller for three year at 9 cents per kilowatt - hour plus whatever delivery fee the local utility charges . They also have to pay an yearly fee , which place from $ 225 to $ 345 . For theaverage Texas household , the fee adds around 2 cents per kilowatt - minute .
For Base Power , the real money is almost certainly in so - called power system - balancing operations . Thanks to the way Texas ’ power grocery works , the inauguration can be pay off — handsomely in some cases — to tap the batteries it has installed to direct electrical energy back to the grid .
By instal residential batteries , Base Power appears to have found a speedy way to build a megawatt - class fleet of batteries , sometimes called a “ virtual power industrial plant . ” While Texas is home to a grow number of monumental power grid - scale battery facilities , they can take year to plan , permit , and built .
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But residential batteries can be tolerate and installed in a affair of week . Base Power installed 10 megawatt - hours in March , co - laminitis and CEO Zach DelltoldCanary Media . The company plan to shoot the 100 megawatt - hour grade sometime this summer .
The new funding will go toward zip installation and thrive into new province . It ’ll also go toward commence construction on a battery factory in the U.S. , an endeavour that could part isolate it from the threat of tariffs but also precede a young feeling of risk . shelling factories have turn up challenging to master , and other ship’s company havehit rough patcheswhen undertake the same .
