“Energy storage is a really good solution for the grid to maintain the capacity that it needs and maintain the flexibility that it needs,” said Randolph Mann, CEO of esVolta, the energy storage company operating the Midlothian yard and another not too far in Seagoville. “And the reason is really that, fundamentally, what energy storage is doing is it's buying power when there's more than enough power on the grid, and therefore, power prices are cheap.”
These yards, called battery energy storage systems (BESS), have been popping up all over the country since the mid-2000s, especially in Texas, as our energy demands increasingly grow and the grid remains unincorporated with national supplies. Estimates from Boston University in 2023 tallied 460 BESS systems across the country, with over half in California and a decent amount in Texas. Mann's company has three in the Lone Star State, but they're not the only company building BESS systems.
“Texas has a good economy,” said Mann. “You guys are growing your economy, there's growth from data centers, and a lot of it. The AI movement is creating growth. You also have growth from manufacturing. You have growth from just population growth. All of that stuff creates the need for more energy resources… If you look at ERCOT's forecast for how much electricity demand is going to grow over the next four or five years, it's a lot.”
Mann explains that renewable energy is produced as long as the sun shines and the wind blows. The middle of the day, when the demand is lowest but the sun is highest, produces unpredictable quantities of power, creating excess energy that goes to waste. But BESS systems allow for the energy to be siphoned and stored for a rainy day, assisting the grid when it’s stretched the thinnest.
“There's a lot of intermittency and volatility on the grid,” he said. “And what storage is able to do is balance all that stuff out to help make sure that moment-to-moment supply and demand are equal. And that's a service that storage is providing to the grid.”
Mann says the conservation of energy waste reduces power prices, but the transmission of the energy supply also helps lower costs. The price of power is highly variable, shifting with minute-by-minute demands. He explains the complex intangibilities of power pricing through the palatable metaphor of highway traffic. At low-traffic times, power can move freely and instantaneously. But when the demands are high, there’s congestion, meaning power is essentially getting stopped up and therefore increasing prices.
“The only reason the prices are different in one place or another is because of transmission congestion,” he said. “You lose some power when you transmit it from hundreds of miles, from one place to another, you'll lose a little bit through inefficiency. So as a result, by putting a project close to load in Dallas, what we're really doing is we're making sure that even if there's transmission congestion from some faraway location to get into Dallas, you've got the local resources that can help meet that evening peak."
Aren’t Lithium Batteries Bad For The Environment?
A huge plot of land with a large supply of hazardous waste raises a fair number of red flags. Directly, the improper disposal of lithium can leak toxic materials into the environment, and indirectly, lithium mining can result in deforestation and soil degradation. It requires huge supplies of water, and factories create large carbon emissions. But widespread renewable energy storage simply cannot exist without lithium-ion batteries. With this in mind, esVolta does its best to keep its impact as low as possible.“Every energy resource is going to have some environmental impact, and what you're trying to do is reduce that and manage it the best you can,” said Mann. “We think a lot about that… we definitely think of these projects as contributing to a lower carbon and emissions rate, because we're basically buying power when emissions are pretty low, and we're putting it back to the grid when emissions are high. So we're trying to displace our emissions.”
There are federal regulations for the recycling of lithium. However, its reusability makes it the gold standard choice for green projects. Lithium-ion batteries age and degrade, meaning they have an expiration date. For large-scale batteries like those at esVolta sites, the battery death date is about 20 years away, giving them a lot of time to make a proper recycling plan or see how recycling technology advances.
“We have a planned use case and then a planned degradation for the facility,” he said. “At the end of that life of the battery, what I would expect you'll see is we'll go recycle those batteries, but then we'll repower it with whatever the then-current technology is. Some of the fixed assets at the facility will be able to be reused. Some of it will be recycled.”
A portion of profits from the Midlothian and Seagoville BESS systems will go to an environmental education center affiliated with the Dallas Independent School District, an environmental non-profit focused on conservation of the Trinity River, the Midlothian Independent School District, and Keep Midlothian Beautiful. The company also provides training on the federally endangered and native whooping crane.
Don’t Lithium Batteries Explode?
There’s a reason you can’t pack a lithium battery in your checked baggage: they’re highly flammable. When you supersize them, the risk of explosion is high. BESS systems do explode. In 2019, four firefighters were injured in an explosion at a facility in Arizona. But the esVolta systems are placed far out from civilization, and they have no stationed employees. The batteries require little attention that can’t be done from a command center, so the risk is low.The esVolta batteries are equipped with an elaborate internal non-water cooling system, 24/7 temperature monitoring, advanced fire suppression technologies within each unit and are fairly spaced to avoid propagation. A spokesperson for the city of Midlothian confirmed the city required the installation of a water line specifically for fire protection.
“What we're trying to do is select an energy storage technology that's not likely to propagate,” said Mann. “Basically, the lithium-ion phosphate technology that we're using [is] a little less prone to that. So it's a little bit easier to control.”
The pros of cheap power prices, renewable energy advancements and a grand total of $33 million in property taxes paid to Dallas and Ellis Counties by both North Texas properties seem to heavily outweigh the cons for the local community.
“The property taxes contributed by this company will benefit the citizens, as well as increase property value,” said the spokesperson for Midlothian in an email. “The city did not experience any community pushback on this project.”
Mann says that sometimes there is misalignment with a city, but the concerns are fair, and that not every city is a good location for a BESS system.
“We haven't had a lot of community pushback or objection for the projects that we've been permitting lately,” said Mann. “[The Midlothian project is] in a pretty industrialized area. There are other energy assets there, including power plants. There's warehouses there, so it fits with the community. I think the community is happy to see the economic development and not so concerned about that particular use… So I think where you've seen projects get rejected from a permitting perspective, it's worth thinking about whether it was the right site in the first place.”
