Oregon energy storage company plans 450-megawatt facility in Galveston County

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The GridStor project will boost the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid. It’s GridStor’s first acquisition in ERCOT territory. Photo via gridstor.com

An Oregon startup has purchased a 450-megawatt battery energy storage project in Galveston County.

GridStor, a Portland, Oregon-based developer and operator of battery energy storage systems, bought the project from Moab, Utah-based Balanced Rock Power. The Utah company develops utility-scale solar and energy storage projects.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

GridStor, founded in 2022, is backed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. The Portland Business Journal reported last November that Goldman Sachs had raised a $410 million fund to fuel its energy storage strategy.

Construction on the Evelyn Battery Energy Storage project is scheduled to get underway this summer, with the system projected to go online in the spring of 2025.

“Battery storage is a scalable and near-term solution to powering historic load growth in Texas,” Chris Taylor, CEO of GridStor, says in a news release. “Every day, batteries are consistently providing energy to stabilize the power system and meet hours of greatest demand in the state.”

The GridStor project will boost the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid. It’s GridStor’s first acquisition in ERCOT territory.

The project will be built near the Hidden Lakes substation, which is owned by Texas-New Mexico Power, which now just serves Texas. This proximity will enable batteries to quickly begin grid-connected operations.

A national research institute recently opened a new lab and outpost adjacent to the University of Houston's campus. Photo via UH.edu

New research lab opens in University of Houston's tech transfer facility

seeing green

A national organization has opened a new Houston outpost at a local university campus.

The Electrochemical Safety Research Institute, or ESRI, of UL Research Institutes opened the doors to a new laboratory in Houston in November. The new space was established to further research renewable energy technologies.

“As the world transitions from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, we are working with research teams across several organizations to lay the scientific groundwork for safe and reliable energy storage alternatives,” says Judy Jeevarajan, ESRI’s executive director, in a news release. “Since several of our research partners are based in Houston, the natural progression was to open our own laboratory in the area.”

The lab is housed in the University of Houston Technology Bridge, a startup park next to the university’s main campus. A team of ESRI’s research scientists will have access to explore the safety and performance of renewable energy technologies. Per the release, ESRI already has ongoing projects with UH within hydrogen research, solid-state batteries, and the synthesis of magnesium-ion separators.

“We are significantly expanding both our capacity and scope to better meet today’s increasingly urgent safety challenges,” says Christopher J. Cramer, ULRI’s chief research officer. “Our new Houston facility is one element of that expansion. The lab will strengthen the synergies between ESRI and our research partners in the area and accelerate scientific discoveries to help create a safer, more sustainable world.”

The facility will also act as a homebase for all Houston-area collaborations. Per the release, the new lab "will also facilitate ESRI’s research partnership with Rice University on lithium-ion cell recycling and the research institute’s work with NASA’s Johnson Space Center on thermal runaway mitigation and micro-USB lithium-ion battery safety." The organization also collaborates with Houston-based Stress Engineering Services Inc.

“We’re delighted to welcome the Electrochemical Safety Research Institute to its new home in Houston,” says Chris Taylor, executive director of the Office of Technology Transfer and Innovation at the University of Houston, in the release. “Together, we can build upon our research culture of collaboration as we pursue innovations for the greater good.”

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Geothermal energy startup's $600M deal fuels surge in Houston VC funding

by the numbers

The venture capital haul for Houston-area startups jumped 23 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to the latest PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.

The fundraising total for startups in the region climbed from $1.49 billion in 2023 to $1.83 billion in 2024, PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor data shows.

Roughly half of the 2024 sum, $914.3 million, came in the fourth quarter. By comparison, Houston-area startups collected $291.3 million in VC during the fourth quarter of 2023.

Among the Houston-area startups contributing to the impressive VC total in the fourth quarter of 2024 was geothermal energy startup Fervo Energy. PitchBook attributes $634 million in fourth-quarter VC to Fervo, with fulfillment services company Cart.com at $50 million, and chemical manufacturing platform Mstack and superconducting wire manufacturer MetOx International at $40 million each.

Across the country, VC deals total $209 billion in 2024, compared with $162.2 billion in 2023. Nearly half (46 percent) of all VC funding in North America last year went to AI startups, PitchBook says. PitchBook’s lead VC analyst for the U.S., Kyle Stanford, says that AI “continues to be the story of the market.”

PitchBook forecasts a “moderately positive” 2025 for venture capital in the U.S.

“That does not mean that challenges are gone. Flat and down rounds will likely continue at higher paces than the market is accustomed to. More companies will likely shut down or fall out of the venture funding cycle,” says PitchBook. “However, both of those expectations are holdovers from 2021.”

This story originally appeared on our sister site, InnovationMap.com.

Halliburton's clean energy cohort tops trending news for January 2025

Trending News Tidbits

Editor's note: We're taking a look back at the top energy transition headlines from the second half of January 2025. Here are the five most-read EnergyCaptialHTX stories, from Halliburton's new clean energy cohort to Texas' top ranking among U.S. manufacturing hubs.

1. Halliburton names 5 clean energy startups to latest incubator cohort

Texas-based 360 Energy is part of Halliburton's new clean energy cohort. Photo courtesy of 360 Energy

Halliburton Labs has named five companies to its latest cohort, including one from Texas. All of the companies are working to help accelerate the future of the energy industry in different ways. The incubator aims to advance the companies’ commercialization with support from Halliburton's network, facilities and financing opportunities. Continue reading.

2. Houston Auto Show returns this month as part of new innovative coalition

The Houston Auto Show and Houston Boat Show (Houston AutoBoative) run from Jan. 2–Feb. 2. Photo via Houston Auto Show/Facebook

The Houston Auto Show and Houston Boat Show (Houston AutoBoative) returned to NRG Center this month, and for the first time, the popular events are part of the Automotive Experience Alliance (AEA). Launched in October, the AEA is a coalition of about 30 auto shows that aim to drive innovation and standardization throughout the auto show industry. Continue reading.

3. Being prepared: Has the Texas grid been adequately winterized?

How has the Texas grid improved since Winter Storm Uri in 2021? Getty Images

As Houston braced for historic winter weather, guest columnist Sam Luna, director at BKV Energy, asked the question on many Texans' minds each winter. In this article, Luna explores how the Texas grid has improved since Winter Storm Uri in 2021. Continue reading.

4. Geothermal exec on Houston expansion, commercialization and more

Axel-Pierre Bois, XGS Energy's Chief Technology Officer. Photo courtesy XGS Energy

Challenges in energy transition often center around two questions: Where will organizations find the resources? And how will projects be financed? XGS Energy's next-gen closed-loop geothermal well architecture addresses both issues head-on. The California-based company saw massive growth in the Houston market last year and recently completed a 100-meter field demonstration in central Texas, marking a major milestone for its technology's commercialization and potential for scale. In an interview with EnergyCapital, Axel-Pierre Bois, XGS's Chief Technology Officer, shares what drew him to the geothermal space, why XGS is expanding in Houston and what the company's plans are for the year ahead. Continue reading.

5. Texas ranks as No. 2 manufacturing hub in U.S., behind only California

A new study puts Texas at No. 2 among the states when it comes to manufacturing. Photo via Getty Images

Texas ranks among the country’s biggest hubs for manufacturing, according to a new study. The study, conducted by Chinese manufacturing components supplier YIJIN Hardware, puts Texas at No. 2 among the states when it comes to manufacturing-hub status. California holds the top spot. Continue reading.

Houston researchers harness dialysis for new wastewater treatment process

waste not

By employing medical field technology dialysis, researchers at Rice University and the Guangdong University of Technology in China uncovered a new way to treat high-salinity organic wastewater.

In the medical field, dialysis uses a machine called a dialyzer to filter waste and excess fluid from the blood. In a study published in Nature Water, Rice’s team found that mimicking dialysis can separate salts from organic substances with minimal dilution of the wastewater, addressing some of the limitations of previous methods.

The researchers say this has the potential to lower costs, recover valuable resources across a range of industrial sectors and reduce environmental impacts.

“Traditional methods often demand a lot of energy and require repeated dilutions,” Yuanmiaoliang “Selina” Chen, a co-first author and postdoctoral associate in Elimelech’s lab at Rice, said in a news release. “Dialysis eliminates many of these pain points, reducing water consumption and operational overheads.”

Various industries generate high-salinity organic wastewater, including petrochemical, pharmaceutical and textile manufacturing. The wastewater’s high salt and organic content can present challenges for existing treatment processes. Biological and advanced oxidation treatments become less effective with higher salinity levels. Thermal methods are considered “energy intensive” and susceptible to corrosion.

Ultimately, the researchers found that dialysis effectively removed salt from water without requiring large amounts of fresh water. This process allows salts to move into the dialysate stream while keeping most organic compounds in the original solution. Because dialysis relies on diffusion instead of pressure, salts and organics cross the membrane at different speeds, making the separation method more efficient.

“Dialysis was astonishingly effective in separating the salts from the organics in our trials,” Menachem Elimelech, a corresponding author on the study and professor of civil and environmental engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice, said in a news release. “It’s an exciting discovery with the potential to redefine how we handle some of our most intractable wastewater challenges.”

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