aloha

Houston clean energy company goes online with Hawaii facility

Plus Power has announced its Oahu, Hawaii, facility is up and running. Photo via pluspower.com

Houston-based Plus Power announced it has begun operating a new facility on Oahu, Hawaii.

The Kapolei Energy Storage, or KES, facility is “the most advanced grid-scale battery energy storage system in the world,” which will help transition the state's electric power from coal and oil to solar and wind, according to the company.

The KES battery project is located on 8 acres of industrial land on the southwest side of Oahu near Honolulu, and will use 158 Tesla Megapack 2 XL lithium iron phosphate batteries. It will offer the grid 185 megawatts of total power capacity and 565 megawatt-hours of electricity. This will act as an electrical "shock absorber" that will be served by combustion-powered peaker plants to respond in 250 milliseconds according to Power Plus.

"This is a landmark milestone in the transition to clean energy," Brandon Keefe, Plus Power's executive chairman, says in a news release. "It's the first time a battery has been used by a major utility to balance the grid: providing fast frequency response, synthetic inertia, and black start. This project is a postcard from the future — batteries will soon be providing these services, at scale, on the mainland."

The KES plant interconnects three of Hawaiian Electric's critical power generation facilities, which can enable KES to support the reboot of power plants in the event of a state-wide emergency.The KES batteries will help replace the grid capacity formerly provided by an AES coal power plant.

By June 2024, Plus Power aims to operate seven large-scale battery energy storage plants across Arizona and Texas. Last year, the company secured $1.8 billion in new financing for a handful of ongoing projects — most of which are in Texas.

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A View From HETI

Fervo Energy has claimed the No. 1 spot on Time magazine’s and Statista’s 2026 list of America’s Top GreenTech Companies. Photo via fervoenergy.com

The accolades keep coming for Houston-based geothermal energy company Fervo Energy.

Fervo sits atop Time magazine’s and Statista’s 2026 list of America’s Top GreenTech Companies. Fervo ranked No. 6 on the list last year.

The ranking honors 250 companies in the U.S. based on their environmental impact, innovation and financial strength. Fervo joins five other Houston-area companies on the list.

  • No. 49 Quaise Energy, an MIT Energy Initiative spinout that’s developing a drilling system designed to convert existing power stations for geothermal power production
  • No. 71 Plus Power, which develops, owns and operates battery energy storage systems
  • No. 98 Utility Global, whose technology enables industrial decarbonization
  • No. 199 Solugen, whose technology converts plant-based feedstocks into carbon-negative chemicals
  • No. 215 Noodoe, which specializes in EV charging stations and software

Fervo says its approach to enhanced geothermal systems (EGS)—including horizontal drilling, AI-enabled drilling and exploration, advanced reservoir engineering, and fiber-optic sensing—demonstrates how validated technology can help deliver reliable zero-emission power.

“By applying drilling technology from the oil and gas industry, we have proven that we can produce 24/7 carbon-free energy resources in new geographies across the world,” Fervo co-founder and CEO Tim Latimer said last year.

Other recent recognitions for Fervo includes:

  • The 2025 Houston Innovation Awards named it Scaleup of the Year
  • MIT Technology Review put Fervo on its 2025 list of the 10 global climatech companies to watch
  • Time named Fervo one of the 100 Most Influential Companies of 2025
  • Fervo was hailed as the Global Cleantech Group 100 North American Company of the Year
  • Fervo was among Congruent Ventures’ and Silicon Valley Bank’s 50 by 2050 companies, all of which are poised to advance global decarbonization over a 25-year span
Just last month, Fervo secured $421 million in debt financing for the construction of its 500-megawatt Cape Station geothermal project in Utah. And in December, the company landed an oversubscribed $462 million Series E round of funding, pushing its valuation to an estimated $1.4 billion. Fervo filed for an IPO earlier this year.

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