OCI Holdings breaks ground on 480MWh battery storage project in Texas
LG Energy Solution Vertech’s Korea Operation Head Park Jae-hong, second from left, and OCI Energy President Sabah Bayatli, third from left, pose with Kim Cheong-ho, heart, chief government of OCI Enterprises and CPS Energy President and CEO Rudy D. Garza, fifth from left, throughout a groundbreaking ceremony for a significant utility-scale battery storage project in Bexar County, Texas. Courtesy of OCI Holdings
OCI Holdings, the inexperienced power and chemical conglomerate finest recognized for producing polysilicon for photo voltaic panels, is increasing its footprint in the North American energy grid.
The firm stated Wednesday that its Houston-based subsidiary, OCI Energy, has damaged ground on a significant utility-scale battery storage project in Bexar County, Texas, amid a broader company push into the North American renewable power market.
The project, dubbed Alamo City, is being developed in partnership with San Antonio’s municipal utility, CPS Energy. Spanning a 140,000-square-meter web site, the power will boast an output capability of 120 megawatts and a storage capability of 480 megawatt-hours, making it one of the vital important grid-balancing installations in the area.
Scheduled to start industrial operations in 2027, the power is engineered to discharge as much as 4 hours of steady backup electrical energy throughout peak demand durations — sufficient to produce roughly 30,000 households in the San Antonio metropolitan space.
Key attendees on the ceremony included Kim Cheong-ho, chief government of OCI Enterprises, OCI Energy President Sabah Bayatli, CPS Energy President and CEO Rudy D. Garza, and Park Jae-hong, head of LG Energy Solution Vertech’s Korea operations.
The deal is backed by project financing from ING Capital. LG Energy Solution Vertech has been tapped to produce the battery programs, whereas Elgin Power Solutions will oversee engineering, procurement and development. Under a 20-year capability settlement, OCI will promote the saved electrical energy again to CPS Energy, which serves 1.28 million households throughout Texas and has maintained a growth partnership with OCI since 2012.
The groundbreaking follows a separate announcement on May 14, in which OCI Energy bought a 50 p.c stake in its 500-megawatt La Salle photo voltaic project to Arava Power, an Israeli power agency. The two firms plan to interrupt ground on that web site later this yr.
With these newest strikes, OCI Energy stated it now instructions a North American growth pipeline of 31 initiatives totaling 7 gigawatts, cut up nearly evenly between utility-scale photo voltaic and power storage programs.
This article was revealed with the help of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.
