CGEMC, Base Power to deploy 50 MW of home batteries — SkimNews
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- Central Georgia Electric Membership Corp. will deploy up to 50 MW of customer-sited energy storage in partnership with Base Power, beginning in 2027, to manage peak demand across its 14-county service area.
- Base Power is launching its first utility partnership outside Texas with CGEMC, marking its entry into a regulated market and expanding its distributed battery model beyond restructured energy markets.
- Base Power installs and maintains 39.2-kWh home batteries at little or no cost to homeowners, using them for grid services like peak-shaving and energy arbitrage while providing up to 36 hours of backup during outages.
- CGEMC plans to use the battery network to add flexible local capacity, particularly in anticipation of large-load growth from proposed data centers, including a 240-MW Equinix campus near Hampton.
- Base Power operates a fleet of over 750 MWh across more than 30,000 homes in Texas and parts of Illinois, leveraging retail energy choice frameworks to monetize distributed storage.
- George Weaver, CGEMC president and CEO, stated the deployment will support the utility’s system while giving participating members reliable backup power and peace of mind.
Why it matters: Rural electric cooperatives like CGEMC face rising capacity demands but lack the rate-of-return incentives that drive traditional utilities to build infrastructure. By tapping distributed batteries, they can defer costly upgrades and reduce wholesale power expenses—directly benefiting ratepayers in a region expecting major data center load growth.
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