GEOS Insights: Battery Championship
Photo: Fluence Energy
January 30, 2026
As our New England Patriots were playing Denver for the AFC Championship out at Mile High last weekend, I was simultaneously tuned into another challenge, one I termed the battery championship. Winter storm Fern was the most significant test for the Texas grid managed by the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) since the great ice storm of 2021, when battery storage systems were in their infancy, with an install base of 220 megawatts in ERCOT. Battery storage in Texas has grown over 77 times in a mere five years, to 17.6 gigawatts according to ERCOT, a diversifying technology to provide instant power during peak demand or outages. Unlike gas or coal power plants that can take hours to ramp up production, battery storage systems can respond to grid power intermittency in milliseconds to stabilize frequency. During the peak of the storm on January 26, batteries provided 4% of the total electricity mix, enough to prevent ERCOT from having to declare an emergency, even as demand peaked to record high winter loads. A flexible 4% power source makes all the difference, as illustrated in the chart below from ERCOT of power sources for the day:
Solar was a workhorse too, seen in the orange in the middle of the day. The battery power contribution is seen in the red, in the morning and then when deployed later in the day. This is the power of distributed energy resources (DERs) – solar and battery storage diversify the grid, with attributes more powerful than legacy coal or gas baseload, because they work in tandem with each other providing flexibility and resiliency.
Essex GEOS holds several companies whose technologies and services enhance ERCOT services. Most importantly, Fluence Energy has 30% exposure to current Texas battery storage assets, with four new projects equating to over 6 GW set to come online by the end of this year. In the end, it was a good weekend with two wins: Patriots for the AFC Championship and headed to the Super Bowl, and battery storage systems in Texas – the battery championship was won, and the series continues.
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