PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, has become a poster child for how not to keep up with soaring energy demand. Startup Base Power is taking a whack at that problem by installing a network of unusually large home batteries in one corner of that regional grid.
Starting today, the first 2,000 customers in Illinois utility ComEd’s territory who sign up with Base Power can get a 40-kilowatt-hour home backup battery for just $95 up front. Subsequent customers will pay $295, still a mere sliver of the $10,000 or more that a backup-capable home battery normally costs. All these customers will then buy retail electricity from Base Power at a 25% discount to the prevailing ComEd rate, which was 10.4 cents per kilowatt-hour this summer. Customers sign a 12-year battery agreement, but can pay a $500 deinstallation fee if they want out early.
This business model gives customers in Chicagoland more options for cheap and resilient power while also giving Base Power the rights to operate the battery fleet in response to broader market dynamics. Base Power will be adding capacity in the northwesternmost territory of the constrained regional grid, but its unique model allows it to avoid PJM’s ossified procedures for expanding large-scale grid production.
“We are deploying capacity behind the meter at the residential home, where an interconnection already exists, so we don’t wait in the interconnection queue,” said Base Power’s founder and CEO Zach Dell. “There’s some work around that, but it’s certainly less onerous and much faster than the large-load interconnection queue.”
PJM famously hosts the densest corridor of data centers, in northern Virginia, but the AI buildout has taken off in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania as well. While hyperscalers stare down yearslong waitlists for new gas turbines to meet their colossal power needs, Base Power can install miniature power plants every day, which add up over time.
[...]
Several layers of policy and regulation made Illinois the right entry point for Base Power in PJM. The state allows retail competition, so Base Power can sell power directly to customers. However, it still has to get permission from a wires utility to hook up the batteries to the distribution grid, and ComEd stood out as a partner.
[...]
Base Power will also tap into a new Illinois policy to encourage virtual power plants that was created by the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, which became law in January. Starting this summer, battery customers can receive a rebate if they install a battery and agree to discharge it to the grid for multiple hours during the evening peak on a certain number of summer nights. It’s a simple way to ensure that the batteries make themselves useful, and Base Power will apply that rebate to support its very low pricing.
From the article:
[...]
[...]