Home battery subscriptions expand from Texas to PJM
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- Base Power, an Austin-based startup operating since 2023, sells backup-only battery subscriptions to Austin Energy and Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative customers for $19–$29 per month with a few-hundred-dollar upfront fee (sometimes waived), retaining ownership and 10-year maintenance of oversized batteries.
- Palmetto launched a Texas retail product internally called "Lonestar" at an effective $25–$50 per month after rebates, joining Terra Energy's TerraOne and the planned Octopus Energy PowerStore entry into the state.
- Base Power offers an energy-plus-backup plan in Oncor and CenterPoint Energy territory bundling $700–$1,000 upfront for 39.2-kWh batteries, a sub-$30 monthly fee, and energy under 14¢/kWh, with pricing locked for 36 months.
- Base Power expanded into northern Illinois's ComEd territory with a 24-month plan: a $95 installation fee and on-peak energy under 8¢/kWh — at least 25% below ComEd's rates — enabled by a 2022 Illinois tariff letting load-serving entities aggregate customers' capacity obligations, potentially reaching zero net load.
- Commonwealth Edison won June regulatory approval for a battery-based "scheduled dispatch virtual power plant" that the utility says will strengthen the regional grid while lowering customer bills.
- Haven Energy, fresh off a 10-MW California residential deployment, expanded into Massachusetts targeting National Grid and Eversource customers in four counties, with $29-per-month subscriptions in grid-constrained pockets tied to the state's new ConnectedSolutions+ VPP.
- Wood Mackenzie analyst Kasim Khan said distribution-connected battery aggregations could play a "disproportionate role" mitigating power price volatility on transmission-constrained grids like PJM and ERCOT, where renewables-rich West Texas cannot easily reach Central and East Texas demand centers.
Why it matters: Subscription models cut battery entry costs from thousands of dollars to roughly a Netflix bill, but only in retail-choice states with VPP-friendly tariffs. The bigger play is grid-side: under Illinois-style aggregation rules, suppliers can zero out their net load obligations and undercut incumbent utilities by 25% or more — turning homeowners' basements into a distributed capacity resource that competes with utility-scale storage siting and permitting.
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