UBS Asset Management gets 700MW ERCOT BESS portfolio from Black Mountain Energy Storage

• Programmer Black Mountain Energy Storage (BMES) has marketed 700MW of development-stage projects to UBS Asset Management, its third substantial sale in the Texas ERCOT market in 2 months.

The 5 standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) projects acquired by UBS Asset Management, part of the Switzerland-based worldwide bank, are expected to come online in 2024. They lie on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid.

UBS stated the projects will provide flexibility, responsiveness, and dispatchability to the ERCOT grid once operational.

The major revenue resources for battery energy storage projects in the state are frequency response services regulation reserve service (RRS) and a sub-set within that group called quick frequency response (RRS-FFR), as well as wholesale energy trading especially around congested nodes.

"This portfolio is comprised of strategically selected, varied projects in locations which are well-positioned for the current state of the marketplace, along with the dynamic growth Texas will experience in the coming years," claimed, Ken-Ichi Hino, Portfolio Manager, Energy Storage Infrastructure, UBS Asset Management.

UBS Asset Management was recommended on the transaction by Troutman Pepper, Clean Energy Counsel, and Euclid Power.

BMES has now offered 1,200 MW of energy storage projects for shipment in ERCOT in 2024 in the last two months, with an overall energy capacity of at the very least 1,700 MWh, assuming that UBS' acquired projects have a discharge of a minimum of one hour.

Recently, BMES marketed 400/600MWh of projects to Cypress Creek Renewables with an average duration of 1.5 hours while in June it sold 2 100MW/200MWh sites to Recurrent Energy, part of Canadian Solar. In both of those cases the purchasers stated they would certainly take over project growth, entitlement, design, purchase, financing and construction and also operate the sites as soon as live.

Programmers in the ERCOT market are normally moving past one-hour systems as energy trading expands as a revenue stream.