seeing green

Houston-based developer claims $98 million tax equity investment for Texas energy storage facility

Plus Power's storage facility, being built on 13 acres in Comal County, is scheduled to come online this spring. Photo courtesy of Plus Power

The Woodlands-based Plus Power has collected an estimated $98 million tax equity investment for its 200-megawatt Ebony Energy Storage facility near San Antonio.

Plus Power says the investment from Solana Beach, California-based Greenprint Capital Management will help stabilize the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) power system “during dynamic summer demand and cold winter storms while helping to integrate more renewable energy into the grid.”

The storage facility, being built on 13 acres in Comal County, is scheduled to come online this spring.

Peter DeFazio, managing director of Greenprint, calls Plus Power “a first mover” among owner-operators of standalone battery energy storage facilities in the U.S. Plus Power owns a portfolio of large-scale lithium-ion battery systems in more than 25 states and Canada.

“As the state and the country experience increasingly extreme temperatures, we are proud that our projects can provide grid services that will help ERCOT increase reliability and meet abnormally high demand,” says Josh Goldstein, chief financial officer of Plus Power.

By this summer, Plus Power expects to be operating four storage plants in the ERCOT market with 800 megawatts of total capacity.

Plus Power announced in 2023 that it completed a $1.8 billion financing for Ebony and four other projects in Texas and Arizona. The financing included $196 million in construction and term financing for the Comal County project.

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A View From HETI

Lummus Technology has broken ground on a new plant in Texas that will support Advanced Ionics' hydrogen electrolyzer technology. Photo via lummustechnology.com

Houston’s Lummus Technology and Advanced Ionics have broken ground on their hydrogen pilot plant at Lummus’ R&D facility in Pasadena.

The plant will support Advanced Ionics’ cutting-edge electrolyzer technology, which aims to deliver high-efficiency hydrogen production with reduced energy requirements.

“By demonstrating Advanced Ionics’ technology at our state-of-the-art R&D facility, we are leveraging the expertise of our scientists and R&D team, plus our proven track record of developing breakthrough technologies,” Leon de Bruyn, president and CEO of Lummus, said in a news release. “This will help us accelerate commercialization of the technology and deliver scalable, cost-effective and sustainable green hydrogen solutions to our customers.”

Advanced Ionics is a Milwaukee-based low-cost green hydrogen technology provider. Its electrolyzer converts process and waste heat into green hydrogen for less than a dollar per kilogram, according to the company. The platform's users include industrial hydrogen producers looking to optimize sustainability at an affordable cost.

Lummus, a global energy technology company, will operate the Advanced Ionics electrolyzer and manage the balance of plant systems.

In 2024, Lummus and Advanced Ionics established their partnership to help advance the production of cost-effective and sustainable hydrogen technology. Lummus Venture Capital also invested an undisclosed amount into Advanced Ionics at the time.

“Our collaboration with Lummus demonstrates the power of partnerships in driving the energy transition forward,” Ignacio Bincaz, CEO of Advanced Ionics, added in the news release. “Lummus serves as a launchpad for technologies like ours, enabling us to validate performance and integration under real-world conditions. This milestone proves that green hydrogen can be practical and economically viable, and it marks another key step toward commercial deployment.”

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