The Houston battery storage plant built in six weeks joins a Texas grid setting demand records

A battery storage plant built in six weeks

SMT Energy and FlexGen built a Houston battery storage plant in six weeks, a facility that draws power from the grid, stores it in rechargeable batteries, and sends it back later, cutting the estimated build time from more than 25 weeks to 6. The plant, called Houston IV, has a nameplate capacity of 160 megawatts, how much electric power it can deliver at once, and can hold 320 megawatt hours, how much energy it can store, enough to run at full output for 2 hours before it runs empty. Irby Construction Company built the plant. Jason Rislov, senior vice president of operations at FlexGen, described the pace in an account FlexGen published itself.

What used to take 25-plus weeks took us six.

Jason Rislov, senior vice president of operations at FlexGen. Source 4.

Shaun Coleman, project manager at Irby Construction, credited the result to the same discipline.

Bringing a 160-MW battery storage facility online in just six weeks required disciplined planning, seamless coordination, and an unwavering focus on safety and quality.

Shaun Coleman, project manager at Irby Construction. Source 4.

At least the 13th project, not the 12th

Houston IV is not the 12th project the two companies have built for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid, known as ERCOT, the operator that runs the power grid for most of the state. The account FlexGen published about this project states Houston IV joins over a dozen prior projects built and commissioned by SMT Energy and FlexGen that actively support the ERCOT grid, totaling more than 300 megawatts of battery storage capacity. Counting Houston IV itself, that puts the total at least at 13 projects, since a group already numbering more than 12 gains one more member the moment this one joins it.

What it cost to build

SMT Energy secured 135,000,000 dollars in financing for Houston IV, arranged by Macquarie and KeyBanc Capital Markets, the banks that organized the deal, according to a press release the company issued directly. Reading that release directly also shows the scale behind the single project. SMT Energy now has 18 utility scale battery storage assets, systems built to serve the whole electric grid rather than a single home, holding about 500 megawatt hours combined, in operation or under construction. The company also states a 2 gigawatt hour pipeline, a gigawatt equal to 1,000 megawatts, of ERCOT and Southwest Power Pool battery storage projects targeted for commercial operation by 2030.

A grid setting demand records

Houston IV connected to a grid already straining under new records. ERCOT set a new hourly peak load record of 91.1 gigawatts on 22 July 2026, 6% above the prior record of 85.5 gigawatts set in August 2023. Natural gas supplied 48% of generation at that peak and solar supplied 32%, with other sources making up the rest.

The United States Energy Information Administration, the federal agency that tracks energy data for the country, recorded 6 straight weeks, from late July through late August 2026, when ERCOT weekly average demand exceeded its old 2023 weekly record. Average demand reached a record 74.5 gigawatts for the week ending 22 August 2026, 10% above the highest weekly average of the previous summer, before easing to 73.7 gigawatts the following week.