Virtual power plant (VPP) platform profile
Base Power: company-owned home batteries as a VPP
How Base Power owns home batteries, sells their grid value to utilities and the Texas market, and grew past 500 MWh in under a year.
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The short answer
- Base Power owns the batteries it puts in homes and runs them as a virtual power plant (VPP). The household pays a small upfront fee, gets backup power, and Base keeps the battery’s grid value, either as a Texas electricity retailer or under contract to a utility (Base Power).
- Its fleet grew fivefold in under a year. It passed 100 MWh in fall 2025, 300 MWh in March 2026 and 500 MWh by August (Sourcery); with Georgia, its utility network tops 750 MWh across 30,000 homes (EnergyTech).
- Utilities pay for delivered capacity. Base can rent its own batteries to a utility on a pay-for-performance basis or build a fleet and hand over ownership (Base Power).
- It is well funded. A $1 billion Series D in August 2026 valued Base at $13 billion and brought total funding past $2.5 billion (Reuters).
Where Base Power fits
Highlighted boxes are the roles this company plays; the green bar shows where its programs sit from demand response to an orchestrated VPP.
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Two business models
In Texas’s competitive market, Base is the household’s retail electricity provider. It charges the battery when wholesale prices are low, uses it for the home or the grid when prices are high, and takes part in the grid operator’s Aggregated Distributed Energy Resource (ADER) pilot. Third-party analyses report upfront fees of $695–$995, monthly fees of $19–$29 and an energy charge near 8.5 cents per kWh plus delivery charges (Teardown).
With utilities and co-ops, Base either rents its batteries to the utility, paid on performance, or builds a fleet and transfers ownership (Base Power). The CoServ deal in North Texas targets 100 MW and pays only for capacity Base actually delivers (Sourcery).
Base Power fleet growth
Megawatt-hours (MWh) of battery storage
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Utility and co-op partners
Partners include Austin Energy, El Paso Electric, CoServ, Farmers Electric and Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative (GVEC) (EnergyTech). GVEC expanded from a 2 MW pilot to 50 MW across its territory (GVEC and Base Power), with 20 MW online by the end of 2026 and 15–20 MW a year after that (Utility Dive).
In October 2026, Central Georgia EMC became Base’s first utility partner outside Texas, with a 50 MW program. Members pay a one-time $95 fee and no monthly charge (pv magazine USA). In co-op deals, the utility, not the household, is effectively buying the grid value.
The battery
Base Core is a 39.2 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery (78.4 kWh in a two-unit setup) with a 12-year design life, built at Base’s Austin factory (Solar Power World). That is about three times the energy of a typical home battery, which gives the fleet more hours of discharge per home.
What it means for program design
Capacity without owning it
Pay-for-performance tolling lets a utility buy delivered megawatts at homes while Base carries the battery cost and risk.
The household’s share is the backup
Customers pay little and get backup power; there is usually no per-event payment to them, so compare programs on total value, not cash pay.
Owned fleets dispatch every day
Owning the battery removes the opt-out and enrollment friction of customer-owned programs.
Method and caveats
Figures are company-reported or from trade press, checked October 16, 2026. Texas retail terms come from third-party analyses, not Base Power, and may have changed. Utility contract prices are not public.