Wall Street wants in on America’s battery storage boom
Sheldon Kimber sees a lucrative opportunity in bottling sunshine. The 46-year-old entrepreneur is installing hundreds of giant batteries the size of shipping containers around sun-soaked Texas and California. The batteries charge up during the day when solar power is abundant.
When electricity demand rises in the evening, straining the power grid, Kimber sells that stored energy at higher prices. Kimber is betting that surging power demand and extreme weather events will make it an increasingly profitable trade. “The only thing we can guarantee in the energy transition is that volatility will increase," said Kimber, chief executive of renewable energy developer Intersect Power.
Kimber is part of a nationwide race to profit from battery storage, which helps stabilize the outdated power grid and smooth out intermittent electricity sources such as wind and solar. It is a rapidly growing sector that is being fueled by a boom in solar energy and billions of dollars from Washington and Wall Street. In one of the largest battery storage deals, Intersect is raising $837 million in debt and equity tied to tax credits from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and HPS Investment Partners.
The money will fund three giant battery storage projects in Texas. Together, the 258 Tesla Megapack batteries will be able to provide enough power for nearly 400,000 homes for two hours when they begin operating in the coming months, Intersect says. The sector’s potential has been in the spotlight after Hurricane Beryl left millions of Houston residents without power.
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