It was built about 10 miles from the busy Houston Ship Channel in the city’s harbor, on the site of HO Clarke, a now-closed fossil fuel power plant owned by Houston Lighting & Power (HL&P). The Greater Houston monopoly also no longer exists, having been dissolved and split into separate entities as part of the deregulation of the Texas energy market.
This means that Callisto I is in a strategically important location to balance the imbalance between energy supply and demand in the metropolitan region and can be expanded in the future to include a further 400 MW/800 MWh of battery storage, Jupiter Power explained.
In December 2023, the Company entered into a $65.2 million financing agreement with the energy finance division of First Citizens Bank for the construction of the project.
This followed the collaboration between the two the previous summer on two Jupiter Power ERCOT projects totaling 160 MW/320 MWh, where First Citizens acted as lead manager for a $70.4 million loan financing.
Bowman, CEO of Jupiter Power, said at the time that Callisto I was “the answer to the call from the Texas legislature to provide more on-demand power in ERCOT and near major load centers where consumers need it most.”
It is the Blackrock-owned developer’s ninth ERCOT BESS project and the first outside of West Texas. Like the other assets in Jupiter Power’s 1,375 MWh ERCOT fleet, it will be deployed in the ERCOT wholesale market to generate revenue for its role in grid stabilization and demand management.
ERCOT has a connection to battery storage with a capacity of around 5 GW and the installed base continues to grow rapidly. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently published data that forecasts an addition of 6.4 GW for 2024.
Senator Schwertner: “It is important that Texas has a diversified energy portfolio”
“Callisto I is the first energy storage project of this scale in the city of Houston and will help meet Houston’s growing electricity needs while increasing resilience to extreme weather events,” Bowman said this week.
This comes as Texas and much of the southwestern U.S. face the hottest periods of the year, bringing peaks in electricity demand and market volatility.
In an interview for Energy-Storage.news Premium In late July, Brandt Vermillion, ERCOT market manager at market research firm Modo Energy, noted that last summer’s “fairly extreme” weather contributed to high energy storage revenues in the grid operator’s service area, averaging around $200,000/MW in 2023. In the meantime, volatility in the market is likely to increase and revenues will become “more concentrated in a few days.”
“This means an increase in volatility, with prices either going through the roof or batteries not making much money at all,” Vermillion said.
Jane Stricker, vice president of the Greater Houston Partnership, the city’s largest chamber of commerce, and executive director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), noted that as Houston’s first large-scale, transmission-connected BESS, Callisto I “will help address peak electricity demand and is another great example of our region’s leadership in scaling and delivering impactful solutions for a comprehensive energy future.”
State Senator Charles Schwertner expressed a similar sentiment, adding, “It is critical that Texas has a diversified power generation portfolio.”
“Batteries play an important role in this portfolio to meet demand in times of need,” said Schwertner, who is also chairman of the Senate Committee on Economics and Trade.
