White Tank is expected to enter service in the first half of 2027 as APS peak demand ran 5% above its 2025 record; GridStor has over 3 GW in its pipeline.

Integration and commissioning support helps complete 220 MW BESS project in Texas. GridStor partnered with Anza to help manage vendor quality assurance issues. In April, Oregon-based storage developer and power producer GridStor and Axpo, a Switzerland-based energy company, signed an energy storage agreement for the Hidden Lakes Reliability Project, a 220 MW, 440 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Galveston County, Texas. GridStor says the partnership supports energy pricing stability for the Houston-area grid. According to GridStor, the company pursued a "self-integrated" model for the Hidden Lakes project. The company essentially performed the design and procurement duties. However, key personnel changes and technical issues with hardware integration threatened the November 2025 deadline for project completion. GridStor brought in California-based engineering, procurement and consulting (EPC) firm Anza to help manage systems integration and commissioning work at a critical time. "In a self-integrated model, the technical risk falls entirely on the owner," said Tony Song, senior vice president of engineering, procurement and construction at GridStor. "Anza mitigated that risk by acting as the technical glue between our vendors, catching specific defects during factory acceptance testing to engineering workarounds for ERCOT compliance." Ravi Manghani, senior director of strategic sourcing at Anza, told pv magazine USA that the partnership with GridStor on the 220 MW BESS facility was a bit of a departure from its usual EPC work in that project was already at an advanced stage. "Normally, we help our customers from initial design to supplier selection, procurement, contracting, and then commissioning support and other post deployment activities," Manghani said. "For this project, we came in for commissioning. We had to make sure all of the vendors and service providers were aligned in terms of what they were going to do and make sure that there were no gaps and risks that ultimately would have to be borne by the owner." One of Anza's priorities was to implement what it called a "forensic-level quality assurance" to address problems with vendors' factory acceptance testing documentation. Anza flagged specific units showing marginal insulation resistance and high continuity resistance on grounding cables. In addition, differing requirements and approaches of the battery, inverter, and energy management system vendors needed to be brought into alignment. To prevent repetitive installation errors across the project's 204 battery containers and 68 inverter skids, Anza recommended a rigorous inspection of a pilot initial installation. The team paused to verify that the mechanical and electrical installation of the first unit met strict quality standards before allowing installation of the remaining units. "Some of these integration gaps manifest themselves during the commissioning process because that's when all the cooks are in the room," Manghani said. "You start to see these scope gaps emerge." While sorting out technical integration issues, Anzar mapped out a commissioning plan with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Anza established daily progress tracking and workarounds to overcome obstacles and maintain the schedule while troubleshooting vendor equipment and integration problems as they arose. According to Manghani, the size of utility scale BESS projects and the tempo of their deployment will only increase as load demand continues to rise from electrification, data centers and EV charging. Moreover, owners and developers are choosing to implement large projects in phases in order to provide reliability and other services as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible. "With these larger, multi-phase projects, product deliveries happen over a longer period of time," he said. "You have to think about quality assurance over the entire arc of the delivery process. Often, these products are not even being manufactured in the same batch because the delivery times are much spread out. This also complicates quality assurance. So, certainly we see a growing need for integration support services." This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with PV Magazine Group and would like to reuse some of its content, please contact: [email protected]. Michael Puttré. Michael Puttré is a New York-based writer who was previously chief editor of the Journal of Electronic Defense and Solar Industry. 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Gridstor advances energy storage expansion through Accelergen deal. May 21, 2026 GridStor, a developer and operator of utility-scale battery energy storage systems, announced that it has acquired the 199 MW, 796 MWh Birdseye project in Adams County, Colorado from Accelergen. The acquisition is GridStor's fifth within the last eighteen months and its second in the Western U.S. "We are actively expanding our portfolio by acquiring high-quality projects," said Chris Taylor, CEO of GridStor. "One of our core strengths is efficiently transitioning projects from the development phase to operational status. We look forward to bringing more battery storage facilities online to support power system reliability for Western utilities." GridStor's acquisition and plan to construct additional standalone battery storage in the Western U.S. comes as the region experiences rapid demand growth. Once constructed, the Birdseye facility is expected to provide power equivalent to serving over 150,000 households during daily hours of highest demand. "Growing regions are reliant on dependable sources of energy to sustain their momentum," said Thomas Houle, Chief Executive Officer of Accelergen. "Battery storage provides a stable foundation for economic growth by supporting a reliable grid, and we are pleased to partner with GridStor to see this project through to operations." The project's commercial operations date is planned for the end of 2028, with construction anticipated to begin as early as 2027. During construction, the project is expected to create an estimated 115 full-time jobs. Backed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, GridStor manages 530 MW, 1,300 MWh of battery energy storage assets in operation and construction, as well as a pipeline of over 3 GW of battery storage projects in later-stage development across the western and central U.S. The company is focused on executing and delivering projects that provide cost-effective, near-term solutions to utilities, data centers, and other large industrial customers in regions with rapidly growing energy demand.