Ørsted has brought its 250-megawatt, 500-megawatt-hour Old 300 battery energy storage system online in Needville, Texas, adding a significant new dispatchable resource to the ERCOT grid. The project represents one of the largest standalone storage assets in the Texas market and strengthens Ørsted’s growing U.S. renewables portfolio at a time when grid reliability concerns are intensifying amid rising demand and thermal plant retirements.
The Old 300 facility enters service as ERCOT continues to lead the nation in battery deployment, with more than 5 gigawatts of storage now operational across the Texas interconnection. That rapid build-out reflects both the market’s energy-only design — which rewards price arbitrage and ancillary services — and the urgent need for fast-ramping capacity to balance record solar and wind output. Ørsted’s decision to develop a two-hour duration asset at this scale signals confidence in the revenue stack available to storage in Texas, even as developers elsewhere in the U.S. increasingly target four-hour configurations to meet resource adequacy requirements.
For Ørsted, the project marks a milestone in a U.S. strategy that has evolved from offshore wind roots into a broader renewables platform encompassing onshore wind, solar, and now storage. The Danish developer acquired the Old 300 site through its 2022 purchase of Ostwind’s U.S. development pipeline and has since advanced a portfolio exceeding 6 gigawatts of operating and under-construction assets across the country. Operating a merchant battery in ERCOT diversifies Ørsted’s revenue exposure beyond contracted offtake agreements, though it also introduces commodity price risk that the company’s integrated trading desk is positioned to manage.
Grid operators and market participants will watch Old 300’s performance closely during the coming summer peak season, when ERCOT’s reserve margins face their sternest test. The facility’s ability to respond within milliseconds to frequency deviations and provide sustained output during evening net-load ramps will demonstrate whether two-hour storage can reliably substitute for retiring gas peakers. As the Texas fleet ages and load growth from data centers and industrial electrification accelerates, the answer will shape investment decisions for the next wave of storage development across the state.
Read the full report at Energy Storage News.