expansion plans

Energy storage startup moves into larger Houston-area space, plans to grow team

Plus Power, which recently relocated its HQ to Houston, has moved into a larger office space. Image via cushmanwakefield.com

A Northern California-born energy storage startup has established its headquarters in The Woodlands.

Plus Power, which develops battery systems designed to store backup power for electric grids, recently signed a lease for nearly 7,000 square feet at Three Hughes Landing in The Woodlands. The company previously was based in coworking space at the Rayford Office Park in Spring.

The company, founded in 2018, shifted its headquarters from San Francisco to the Houston area last year.

“We chose The Woodlands for its beauty, and walkable access to great nearby hotels, restaurants, and healthy groceries,” says Brandon Keefe, CEO of Plus Power. “A Houston base reflects our deep focus on the Texas market, as we are investing nearly $1 billion in several projects here that will be online by the first quarter of 2024, with more in [the works] behind that.”

About 40 employees work from Plus Power’s new office in The Woodlands. Across North America, the company employs about 130 people, including several in Austin. As of July 10, the startup listed nine job openings.

Plus Power develops, owns, and operates utility-scale systems that store energy in huge lithium-ion batteries during low-demand periods. In times of peak demand, power providers can tap into this stored energy.

“Standalone energy storage is rapidly transforming the U.S. energy markets, because it is cheaper than new natural gas plants, faster to build than fossil peakers or transmission, and able to perform diverse energy services,” the company explains in its job postings.

Peakers are backup power plants that run on fossil fuels.

One of Plus Power’s storage facilities is the 100-megawatt Gambit project, which opened two years ago in Angleton. The nearly eight-acre facility supports power supplies for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which runs the power grid for 90 percent of Texas.

The company says the Angleton facility has fed backup energy to ERCOT during this year’s and last year’s heatwaves, as well as last December’s winter freeze.

The Gambit facility might ring a bell with some folks in the Houston area. In January 2022, Austin-based automaker Tesla unveiled a backup power storage facility in Angleton. Plus Power bought the project from Tesla in June 2022.

Plus Power’s development pipeline contains 10 gigawatts’ worth of energy storage projects in 28 states and Canada. That includes massive projects on tap for Hawaii and Arizona.

Last November, Plus Power announced it had secured $219 million in debt financing for construction of the 185-megawatt Kapolei project on a roughly eight-acre site in Oahu, Hawaii. The facility will be tied to Hawaiian Electric’s power grid. Mizuho Securities USA and KeyBank led the financing.

This April, Plus Power held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Sierra Estrella project in Tolleson, a Phoenix suburb. The 250-megawatt system will serve Salt River Project (SRP), a utility provider in the Phoenix area. The roughly 11-acre Tolleson facility is set to open next year, as is another Plus Power project for SRP — the 90-megawatt Superstition facility in Gilbert, another Phoenix suburb.

As its development pipeline demonstrates, Plus Power is firmly plugged into the fast-growing energy storage market.

According to the Houston-based energy research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie and the American Clean Power Association, the U.S. energy storage market installed a record-breaking 4.8 gigawatts of capacity in 2022. This year, that number is projected to approach 75 gigawatts.

In a March 2023 news release, John Hensley, the clean power group’s vice president of research and analytics, says the U.S. market “is on a rapid growth curve and is already a key component of building a resilient grid that supports abundant clean energy.”

Trending News

 

A View From HETI

CenterPoint is one of 13 Houston companies on Time's list. Photo via centerpoint.com

Seven Houston-based businesses focused on the energy industry appear on Time magazine and Statista’s new ranking of the country’s best midsize companies.

Time and Statista ranked companies based on employee satisfaction, revenue growth, and transparency about sustainability. All 500 companies on the list have annual revenue from $100 million to $10 billion.

The Houston energy-focused companies on the list are:

  • No. 141 MRC Global. Score: 85.84
  • No. 176 National Oilwell Varco. Score: 84.50
  • No. 266 Nabor Industries. Score: 81.59
  • No. 296 Archrock. Score: 80.17
  • No. 327 Superior Energy Services. Score: 79.38
  • No. 359 CenterPoint Energy. Score: 78.02
  • No. 461 Oceaneering. Score: 73.87
In total, 13 Houston-based businesses appear, with Houston engineering firm KBR topping the Texas businesses that made the list. KBR earned the No. 30 spot, earning a score of 91.53 out of 100. It is joined by these other Houston companies:
     
  • No. 168 Comfort Systems USA. Score: 84.72
  • No. 175 Crown Castle. Score: 84.51
  • No. 234 Kirby. Score: 82.48
  • No. 332 Insperity. Score: 79.15
  • No. 485 Skyward Specialty Insurance. Score: 73.15

Additional Texas companies on the list include:

  • No. 95 Austin-based Natera. Score: 87.26
  • No. 199 Plano-based Tyler Technologies. Score: 86.49
  • No. 139 McKinney-based Globe Life. Score: 85.88
  • No. 140 Dallas-based Trinity Industries. Score: 85.87
  • No. 149 Southlake-based Sabre. Score: 85.58
  • No. 223 Dallas-based Brinker International. Score: 82.87
  • No. 226 Irving-based Darling Ingredients. Score: 82.86
  • No. 256 Dallas-based Copart. Score: 81.78
  • No. 276 Coppell-based Brink’s. Score: 80.90
  • No. 279 Dallas-based Topgolf. Score: 80.79
  • No. 294 Richardson-based Lennox. Score: 80.22
  • No. 308 Dallas-based Primoris Services. Score: 79.96
  • No. 322 Dallas-based Wingstop Restaurants. Score: 79.49
  • No. 335 Fort Worth-based Omnicell. Score: 78.95
  • No. 337 Plano-based Cinemark. Score: 78.91
  • No. 345 Dallas-based Dave & Buster’s. Score: 78.64
  • No. 349 Dallas-based ATI. Score: 78.44
  • No. 385 Frisco-based Addus HomeCare. Score: 76.86
  • No. 414 New Braunfels-based Rush Enterprises. Score: 75.75
  • No. 431 Dallas-based Comerica Bank. Score: 75.20
  • No. 439 Austin-based Q2 Software. Score: 74.85
  • No. 458 San Antonio-based Frost Bank. Score: 73.94
  • No. 475 Fort Worth-based FirstCash. Score: 73.39
  • No. 498 Irving-based Nexstar Broadcasting Group. Score: 72.71
---
This article originally appeared on our sister site, InnovationMap.

Trending News