West Texas is an energy center, home not only to one of the world’s most prolific oil and natural gas basins but major wind and solar power installations. Now the region is becoming home to battery energy storage facilities.

“It’s really where they can be the most beneficial,” Caitlin Smith, senior director for Regulatory, External Affairs & ESG at Jupiter Power, told the Reporter-Telegram by telephone from her Austin office.

Jupiter Power has just commenced operations of its Flower Valley II battery energy storage facility in Reeves County, a 100-megawatt storage facility that sits alongside its 9.9-megawatt Flower Valley 1 facility. The new facility represents enough power to meet the electricity needs of 20,000 homes during peak demand in Texas. Combined, the two facilities represent an investment of more than $70 million in Reeves County.

Jupiter also has two other facilities – the 200-megawatt Crossett in Crane County and the 100-megawatt Swoose II in Ward County – under construction. Already in operation are the 7.5-megawatt Triple Butte I in Pecos County and 9.9-megawatt Swoose 1, also in Ward County. The company expects to have more than 650 megawatt hours of dispatchable energy storage capacity to be online before this summer’s peak season for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Smith explained that the battery storage sites can benefit the electric grid by relieving transmission constraints.

“Transmission constraints can mean there’s too much wind in West Texas with no place to go,” she said. Rather than building new transmission lines to move that wind power, she said the batteries can absorb that excess energy until it’s needed, then distribute it to the grid.

“It’s time-shifting,” she said.

The 200-megawatt hour capacity of the Flower Valley II, which is the same size as the upcoming Swoose II project, creates 100-megawatt of power for two hours. Smith said that, on average, the cost of a facility doubles as the duration doubles. Battery storage technology is still developing, according to Smith.

“We need the costs to come down for longer duration. Two-hour duration is good, she said, “but we want it to be more and more hours. The technology needs to develop longer duration at lower cost.”

One way to advance that development is for battery storage facilities, such as those Jupiter is building, to receive the same incentives as other power generators, Smith said.

She said the company’s utility-scale battery storage facilities could help firm up the renewable energy facilities growing throughout the Permian Basin. She pointed to criticism of wind and solar power failing during Winter Storm Uri last February, contributing to the blackouts suffered throughout the state. Battery facilities that can store and then dispatch energy could support wind and solar power that is generated when it’s not needed or not able to work when it is needed.

“I see battery storage enabling us to have wind and solar power and still be reliable,” she said.

That was the comment of former Congressman Bill Flores, who served on the Energy & Commerce Committee during his time in Congress. “Projections show that Texas will continue to lead the U.S. in the addition of wind and solar generation. Renewable resources, however, add increasing complexity and reliability challenges to grid management, but the addition of significant energy storage and related technologies will help mitigate these challenges to help improve grid resilience and reliability as part of an ‘All of the Above’ energy solution to provide power while reducing emissions,” he said in a statement.

Jupiter is backed by EnCap Investments L.P., Yorktown Partners and Mercuria Energy. The company has invested more than $250 million to date in a portfolio of utility-scale energy storage projects operating or in construction throughout the US.