Base Power, a distributed energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas, has announced a new electricity plan offered to customers in the state’s deregulated retail energy market. But unlike the company’s existing offerings, the new plan doesn’t require the customer to host a Base Power battery on site.
The company is well known for offering homeowners battery backup as a service in many areas in Texas, and has also recently inked partnerships with utilities like El Paso Electric and CoServ.
Homeowners who participate in these programs sign up to have one or two 25 kWh Base Power batteries installed at their residence and pay $19 or $29 per month, respectively.
The plan also includes a low per-kWh price for all the energy the customer uses and the promise that the batteries will be there to provide at least some backup power in the event of a grid outage — with up to 100% of the batteries’ energy capacity available if the outage results from a predicted severe weather event.
The new Base Energy plan offers the same per-kWh rates as the company’s battery-attached offerings, but does not require the customer to install a Base power battery at their service address.
Instead, the company says Base Energy customers will “balance the load” of its existing fleet of home batteries, drawing on the Base power virtual power plant (VPP) represented by those batteries.
The fact that the new plan doesn’t come with one of Base Power’s batteries means the plan is open to all eligible ratepayers, including those living in apartments and condos.
With flat “all-in” rates of between 13.2 and 15.7 cents per kWh, Base Power says it can save the majority of Texas ratepayers money compared to options from other retail electric providers like Gexa and TXU, based on the company’s analysis of thousands of electricity bills submitted through its rate comparison tool.
The Base Energy plan is available on a 36-month contract to all customers served by CenterPoint, Oncor, Texas New Mexico Power Company, AEP Central and AEP North.
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