Base Power and Austin Energy strike deal for 40 MW of home batteries on the grid

AUSTIN - Base Power, the Austin energy startup founded by Zach Dell, has entered an agreement with Austin Energy to deploy 40 megawatts of residential battery storage across the municipal utility's service territory. The arrangement lets the utility tap a fleet of home batteries as a dispatchable resource during periods of peak demand or price volatility, while giving participating homeowners whole-home backup power.

The deal slots into Austin Energy's stated goal of reaching 125 MW of storage by 2027 and reflects a growing strategy of stitching together distributed home batteries into a virtual power plant rather than relying solely on large central installations. Base Power said it expects to launch the program later this summer.

The partnership comes as Base Power scales aggressively after a $1 billion Series C that valued the company at about $4 billion. The startup has also floated a roughly $265 million manufacturing facility near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, though it stepped back from a city incentive package tied to that plan.

Why it matters

Texas's grid reliability has been a recurring flashpoint, and a hometown startup wiring thousands of homes into a controllable storage network is a direct, local test of whether distributed batteries can ease peak stress. It also keeps a fast-growing energy company's deployments - and jobs - rooted in its own backyard.

This work strengthens the local grid by adding a new dispatchable resource that can be activated during periods of peak demand or price volatility while creating an opportunity for Austin homeowners to participate in Base Power's whole-home backup power program.— Austin Energy, news release