RWE AG has brought its 30-megawatt (MW) Texas Waves II co-located battery storage facility online in Texas, the company said July 24, as the state breaks energy demand records.

Located at the Pyron Wind Farm in Scurry, Texas, southeast of Lubbock, the facility features a 1-hour lithium-ion battery and provides ancillary services to the energy market and grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

The project follows Texas Waves I, two 9.9-MW short duration energy storage projects that went online in 2017 at the RWE Pyron and Inadale wind farms in West Texas.

“This new battery storage system helps us make progress against our Growing Green Strategy to achieve net-zero by 2040 goal, while providing a rapid and flexible response asset to the Texas power grid,” RWE Clean Energy CEO Mark Noyes said in a news release. “As this summer’s heat drives all-time energy demand records in Texas, renewable energy, including battery energy storage, is contributing to relieving stress on the grid.”

Battery energy storage systems store energy from various sources and discharge it when needed such as when demand exceeds supply. Though Texas has issued weather watches this summer after seeing electricity demand hit record highs, supplies have kept up pace.

ERCOT said it set an all-time maximum peak demand record of 80,787 MW on June 27, surpassing its previous all-time record of 80,148 MW set on June 20, 2022.

Texas has recorded numerous days of triple-digit temperatures at or above 100.

RWE said it currently has about 2.5 gigawatt hours of battery storage projects underway in the U.S.

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