Base Power is an Austin-based residential energy company that installs lithium iron phosphate home batteries and is the customer's retail electricity provider. It was founded in 2023 by CEO Zach Dell and co-founder Justin Lopas (chief operating officer) and launched commercially in May 2024. Dell, previously at Blackstone and Thrive Capital, is the son of Michael Dell. Lopas came from SpaceX and Anduril, where he ran manufacturing operations. The company says its broader team includes alumni of SpaceX, Tesla, Anduril, Blackstone, and Apple.
The company operates in Texas's deregulated electricity market (ERCOT), where it holds a Retail Electric Provider license. That license is central to the business model. It lets Base buy power on the wholesale market and resell to residential customers, giving the company control over both the hardware (the battery) and the electricity flowing through it, which is what makes the grid services revenue possible. Base had deployed more than 100 MWh of home batteries across Texas as of late 2025 (its figure) and also serves customers in Illinois, in ComEd's delivery territory.
Customers pay a one-time installation fee ($695 to $995), a monthly subscription ($19 or $29 depending on battery size), and a fixed electricity rate of 8¢/kWh plus utility delivery charges. Base guarantees its rates stay below the local market average. The below-market installation price embeds a hardware subsidy that the ongoing electricity relationship is designed to recover over time.
As a licensed REP, Base buys electricity on ERCOT's real-time wholesale market. Its software charges home batteries when prices are low and dispatches them back to the home (and the grid) when prices spike. The spread between the charging cost and the discharge value is, by the company's account, its main per-battery revenue source. ERCOT's nodal pricing structure means each battery's grid location has its own price signals, and Base dispatches each unit accordingly. The company shares part of the arbitrage margin with customers through below-market electricity rates rather than direct cash payments.
In February 2026, Base launched its first regulated utility program with El Paso Electric, deploying 10 MW of distributed battery capacity. Under this structure, batteries connect on the utility side of the meter, EPE manages dispatch centrally and pays the first 500 homeowners $250 per battery (up to two), and Base is paid by the utility as a capacity provider rather than by the customer as an electricity retailer. This creates a path into the roughly 90% of U.S. electricity markets that are regulated and where Base cannot hold an REP license. Base extended the model in 2026 with a municipal-utility pilot at Austin Energy and cooperative programs including a 100 MW agreement with CoServ near Dallas-Fort Worth.
Base's batteries use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, chosen for its thermal stability, long cycle life (15+ years rated), and a supply chain independent of nickel and cobalt. The Gen 2 product is a 25 kWh ground-mounted module with an 11.4 kW inverter, stackable to 50 kWh with a second unit. It mounts adjacent to the home's AC system and requires no solar installation.
Gen 3, now in production at the Austin factory, is designed and manufactured in-house, with a 40 kWh base unit. Base says the move to in-house hardware should cut unit cost and let the engineering team iterate on hardware and software together. Dell has described the manufacturing ramp as difficult, with the critical period running through mid-2026.
Several features of ERCOT suit Base's model. Texas runs an energy-only market with real-time nodal pricing, no capacity market, and relatively few barriers for new retail providers. Price spikes are also more frequent and more extreme than in most U.S. markets: Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 sent wholesale prices to $9,000/MWh for days. A distributed fleet of batteries that charges during off-peak hours and discharges during price events can capture that spread repeatedly.
Base is qualifying its battery fleet for ERCOT's Aggregated Distributed Energy Resources (ADER) pilot (2025–2026), in part through partner cooperatives such as Bandera Electric, whose virtual power plant has qualified for ERCOT wholesale participation. ADER participation would let the fleet earn from grid ancillary services such as frequency regulation and operating reserves, which carry separate compensation from the energy market, alongside energy arbitrage.
Base's interim factory occupies the former Austin American-Statesman printing site in downtown Austin, near its engineering office; Dell has described the short distance between design and production as central to compressing the hardware iteration cycle. The company had planned a larger, roughly 486,000-square-foot plant near the Austin airport with about 500 jobs and a $265 million investment, but that incentive deal was dropped in early 2026 and the plan was scaled back to a smaller facility. Base has said it still plans a second U.S. factory.
Taking on in-house manufacturing two years after incorporation is demanding. Most residential battery installers source cells and BMS components from established suppliers (LG, BYD, CATL) and focus on software and installation. Base is going further upstream; it says controlling the hardware should improve unit economics and speed product development. Whether the Gen 3 ramp stays on schedule is testable through 2026.
Base raised a $68 million Series A in May 2024, about 9 months after it was founded. The $200 million Series B followed in April 2025, co-led by Addition, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Valor Equity Partners, with participation from Thrive Capital, Altimeter, Terrain, and Trust. 6 months later, in October 2025, the company closed a $1 billion Series C led by Addition at a pre-money valuation of about $3 billion (roughly $4 billion post-money). Other Series C participants included CapitalG, Elad Gil, Lightspeed, Ribbit, Thrive Capital, Valor, Lowercarbon, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The pace of fundraising reflects both investor appetite for distributed energy storage and Base's rapid deployment growth: from zero to more than 100 MWh in its first 18 months or so. Partnerships with homebuilder Lennar and electric cooperatives such as Bandera (Hill Country Texas), GVEC, and CoServ provide customer-acquisition channels beyond direct-to-consumer marketing; Base also operates in the CenterPoint Energy (Houston) delivery area.
The core strategy is to build a distributed battery fleet large enough that grid services revenue subsidizes below-market electricity rates for customers, which the company expects to reduce churn. Each new installation adds to the fleet's aggregate capacity and its ability to capture ERCOT price spreads. The El Paso Electric partnership tests a second model for markets where the Texas REP structure does not apply. In April 2026 Base also launched a battery-free retail electricity plan across major Texas utility territories, extending its retail business beyond customers who install its hardware.
The $1 billion Series C funds national expansion beyond Texas and Illinois, Gen 3 manufacturing scale-up, and continued software development. The next geographic targets are likely other deregulated or partially deregulated markets (MISO, PJM, parts of New England) where nodal pricing creates similar arbitrage opportunities to ERCOT, though no other U.S. market has ERCOT's price volatility or its isolation from the broader grid.
The profitability of the ERCOT model depends on wholesale price volatility. ERCOT has added capacity and transmission since Uri, which may compress future price spikes. If spreads narrow over time, Base would need to lean more heavily on monthly subscription fees and ADER ancillary services revenue to cover hardware costs and customer acquisition. How well the arbitrage margin holds as ERCOT adds capacity will determine how much the model relies on subscription and ancillary revenue.
In-house battery manufacturing at scale is a difficult problem. The hardware industry has many examples of companies that raised large rounds and then struggled on the factory floor. Base is building its first production facility while simultaneously growing its install base. Any hardware quality issues or production delays would create a tension between deployment commitments and product availability.
The regulated utility expansion path (El Paso Electric) is a structurally different business from the Texas REP model. In regulated markets, Base is a vendor to a utility rather than the customer's direct electricity provider. That changes the economics, the sales cycle, and the customer relationship. Whether Base can build a scalable regulated utility business alongside its retail business is an open question, and the two models may require different organizational capabilities.
This profile was compiled from publicly available information including:
Base Power corporate website — Product details, pricing, and service territory.
TechCrunch (Oct 2025) — Series C announcement, business model, and manufacturing plans.
Energy Capital (Apr 2025) — Series B announcement and investor details.
PV Magazine USA (Feb 2026) — El Paso Electric partnership and regulated utility model.
POWER Magazine — Leadership interview on grid services and ERCOT integration.
This profile is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation, or a solicitation to buy or sell any security.