Bethel Energy Center

Overview:

The Bethel Energy Center is a planned 324 MW compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility that will be located in Anderson County, within Texas’ ERCOT power market. The project is fully permitted and construction-ready. When complete, the plant will provide power for over 300,000 homes, reduce carbon emissions and encourage construction of new renewable plants while generating new jobs and millions of dollars in annual tax revenue.

Fast facts:

  • Location: Tennessee Colony, Anderson County, Texas
  • Site size: 22 acres
  • Generator capacity: 324 MW (expansion up to 487 MW)
  • Storage capacity: ~16,000 MWh
  • Technology: Compressed air energy storage
  • Fuel: Electricity (compression) and natural gas (expansion)
  • Anticipated Commercial Operation Date: Winter 2025
  • Electrical interconnection: 345 kV grid, ERCOT North Zone

Facility highlights:

The Bethel Energy Center will:
  • Provide 324 MW of low cost, clean power within 10 minutes from a cold start
    • Provide fast-response ancillary services to help balance intermittent renewable energy production
    • Utilize long-duration storage of 48 hours to enable time-shifting of renewable energy production from low-demand to high-demand periods and provide low-cost ancillary services
    • Utilize independent compression and generation provide incremental demand for renewables, reducing probability of curtailment
  • Displace conventional fossil fuel-fired generation and increase available demand for additional wind and solar capacity:
    • The 324 MW Bethel CAES plant can provide the same volume of ancillary services as 2,000 MW of combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT) with only 112 MW of associated energy production; thereby reducing CO2 emissions and enabling additional energy production from low-cost renewable resources
  • Community benefits:
    • Create ~25 high-paying, permanent jobs in Anderson County
    • Create ~200 construction jobs over its 3 year construction period
    • Generates millions of dollars of county tax revenue annually

ERCOT market highlights:

  • Texas currently leads the United States in installed wind capacity with 24.9 GW of operational resources inside the ERCOT service territory as of March 2019
  • Wind made up 19% of all ERCOT generation during 2018
  • Wind generation accounts for more than 40% of ERCOT supply in certain hours
  • ERCOT is projected to reach 28 – 36 GW of installed wind capacity by 2020, increasing the instances where wind represents greater than 40% of supply
  • Given this level of renewable penetration, there is an increasing market need for fast-responding, long duration energy storage that supports renewable integration
  • Visit this page for updated wind and solar projections from ERCOT