100MW/200MWh BESS goes online in Texas with Energy Vault and Jupiter Power

Energy Vault served as the EPC contractor and system integrator, and the company has been contracted to provide a second BESS deployment. “This is an important milestone in our ongoing partnership with the Jupiter Power team to deliver on a robust pipeline of BESS projects across the United States,” said Akshay Ladwa, Chief Engineering Officer, Energy Vault.

Energy Vault and Jupiter Power are ongoing cooperation partners. In 2022, the two companies agreed to secure 2.4 GWh of supply chain equipment and services. These are integrated and delivered through Energy Vault’s hardware and software management platform in Jupiter Power’s battery energy storage projects.

“Jupiter Power is proud to continue providing critically needed dispatchable capacity to the ERCOT market with projects like our St. Gall BESS,” said Michael Geier, Chief Technology Officer, Jupiter Power. “The Energy Vault team’s deep expertise and collaborative approach were critical to the rapid design and commissioning of this unique, AC-coupled BESS configuration.”

Both the BESS now in operation and the second system to be built use Energy Vault’s X-Vault integration platform using Energy Vault’s UL9540 certified B-Vault product and Vault-OS Energy Management System to control, manage and optimize the BESS operations.

The B-Vault from Energy Vault is a suite of BESS with enclosure architecture and AC-coupled and DC-coupled configurations. Energy Vault says its system architecture provides customer optionality with both battery and inverter suppliers. The company maintains that its unique AC-coupled and DC-coupled configurations provide drop-in flexibility.

Energy Vault’s Ladwa said, “The streamlined commissioning process and delivery of the St. Gall BESS, as well as Jupiter Power’s decision to expand this partnership, are direct results of not only Energy Vault’s commitment to a customer-centric approach but of Jupiter Power’s strong understanding of market dynamics and our AC block solution specifically.”

Energy Vault’s B-VAULT product is now gaining market traction with recently completed BESS deployments with partners NV Energy and Wellhead Electric/W Power, among others, including a recently signed agreement with ACEN Australia. The company, headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, says its B-Vault portfolio currently consists of more than 2 GWh in total projects either deployed or currently in development.

The Swiss company, which has numerous large-scale projects in China, specializes in gravity and kinetic energy-based, long-duration energy storage products. The foray into chemical storage in the last couple of years was primarily because the gravity-based long-duration energy storage (LDES) technology was slow to gain traction, particularly in the West.

While the company has now successfully expanded its portfolio with chemical-based energy storage with BESS, gravitational storage is now also taking off. In June 2024, Energy Vault unveiled a design partnership for gravity storage in skyscrapers that will see architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), responsible for some of the world’s tallest buildings, incorporate Energy Vault’s gravity energy storage technology into tall buildings in urban environments and deployable structures in natural environments.

In May 2024, Energy Vault and Enel revealed plans to build 18 MW/36 MWh of gravity storage in the United States. They say that the project will be the first large-scale gravity energy storage in a Western country. Gravity storage solutions require no critical raw materials and already supply energy storage at numerous global sites.