Energy Vault Secures Funds for 57-MW Cross Trails Battery Project

• Energy Vault has raised USD 18 million to refinance its 57-MW/114-MWh Cross Trails battery in Texas, now fully online under a decade-long offtake with Gridmatic.

Energy Vault Holdings Inc has wrapped up an USD 18-million package to refinance its Cross Trails battery energy storage system (BESS) near Fredericksburg, Texas, the company confirmed this week. The 57-MW/114-MWh asset quietly entered commercial operation in June and is already delivering energy and ancillary services into the ERCOT power market.

The non-recourse financing comes barely a year after Energy Vault launched its “own-and-operate” strategy, under which it uses balance-sheet capital to seed projects and then recycles cash once they are built and contracted. Company executives described the transaction as the third in a string of quarterly monetisations that are “returning cash to the balance sheet” while retaining long-term ownership of the facility.

Cross Trails is backed by a 10-year revenue swap with artificial-intelligence trader Gridmatic, locking in fixed income for both energy and ancillary-service outputs. The agreement shields the project from ERCOT’s famously volatile real-time prices while giving Gridmatic flexible capacity to arbitrage the growing midday solar peaks and evening demand spikes on the Texas grid.

Located about 80 miles west of Austin, the lithium-ion system can dispatch up to two hours of stored electricity—enough to power roughly 23,000 homes during peak demand. Besides energy arbitrage, the battery will compete in ERCOT’s fast-responding frequency-regulation and reserve markets, products that have seen earnings quadruple since 2022 as extreme weather and rapid solar build-outs strain grid stability. 

Energy Vault noted that Cross Trails reached mechanical completion less than nine months after breaking ground, underscoring both the company’s execution capability and Texas’ streamlined permitting regime for standalone storage. CEO Robert Piconi said the model will be replicated across a 4-GWh U.S. development pipeline, with a focus on ERCOT and CAISO. “Rapid recycling of construction equity back into new projects keeps our flywheel turning while de-risking the balance sheet,” he added.

The deal arrives amid a record wave of storage build-outs in Texas, which is on track to double installed battery capacity to more than 10 GW by the end of 2025. Analysts say projects like Cross Trails are critical to smoothing renewable intermittency as wind and utility-scale solar top 40% of ERCOT’s generation mix on certain days.