The Katy Area Chamber of Commerce hosted a “lunch and learn” session at its offices at 814 East Street in Katy on September 26, featuring two speakers representing new energy technologies.

Alex Rohr, manager for community for Vesper Energy, presented his company’s plan for a battery energy storage system (BESS) which is planned for the Katy area. Ochoa Energy, a division of Vesper, is seeking local approval to build their battery storage facility at 27051 Highway Blvd, in Katy. The 24-acre facility would house up to 200 modules similar to shipping containers holding lithium-ion batteries, which Rohr said would store excess energy and then release it back onto ERCOT’s power grid when demand is high. When completed, the 500 MW system will provide enough to power about 60,000 homes for two hours, according to the company’s presentation. The project is expected to create two to four jobs locally.

Rohr said that ERCOT projects a need for 72 per cent more energy in the next five years.

BESS sites are becoming more common, especially in the Houston area, Rohr said. The Katy site is one of three being launched by Vesper; another is in Angleton and a third is in Galveston County.

According to research by the Katy Times, another BESS site, to be operated by different company -- Peregrine Energy -- was recently approved by the League City city council in a 6-2 vote, according to video of the council meeting. Earlier this year, GridStor, a developer and operator of utility-scale battery energy storage systems, announced that it has acquired an up to 450 MW / 900 MWh project in Galveston County from Balanced Rock Power. The Evelyn Battery Energy Storage project, which is slated to begin construction in summer 2024, has an anticipated on-line date of spring 2025.

Approval from the Katy City Council for the Ochoa project was delayed until the October 14 meeting, when the matter will be reconsidered. Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor with University of Houston Cullen College of Energy, emphasized that future energy solutions need to meet all three of the following criteria: reliable, affordable and sustainable, saying that many initiatives meet only two of the three. He said that the oil and gas industry is seeking solutions to deal with emissions through the development of technology such as catalytic converters and systems for removing carbon dioxide from the air through carbon capture. He also spoke about hydrogen fuels and electric vehicles, and the challenges created by the heavy weight of those vehicles.