Base Power announces first utility partnership outside Texas

Base Power, a Texas company that installs home batteries and taps their combined power to help utilities meet demand, is expanding for the first time outside Texas. It has partnered with Central Georgia EMC, an electric co-op serving more than 61,000 homes between Atlanta and Macon, to provide 50 megawatts of battery capacity drawn from devices installed at customers' houses.

If you're a Central Georgia EMC customer, you'll be able to sign up to host one of Base's batteries at your home. There's a one-time $95 setup fee and no monthly costs after that. In return, you get a battery that can back up your whole home's power during an outage. Most of the time, though, the co-op will pull power from these home batteries to help run its grid. The program will use 2,500 of Base's new "Base Core" batteries, adding up to about 100 megawatt-hours of storage, and the first installations are set for 2027.

This is Base Power's first deal outside Texas, where it already has several similar partnerships with utilities. The company's battery fleet now totals more than 750 megawatt-hours across over 30,000 homes nationwide. The move comes shortly after Base closed a $1 billion funding round and launched its newest home battery model. For homeowners outside this specific Georgia service area, the news mainly signals that this kind of home-battery-for-grid-services arrangement is spreading to more utilities and regions.