Key Capture Energy’s platform sales process has struggled somewhat given issues impacting parts of its portfolio, including its operating assets in ERCOT, despite multiple project advancements in MISO and NYISO earlier this year, NPM has learned.

While first round bids were submitted in mid-June, there were rumblings that the platform only received preferred equity bids.

PassKey, the US investment arm of KCE’s sponsor SK Innovation, hired Nomura Greentech earlier this year to run a sales process.

The process is still ongoing, but it is unclear what the next steps might be.

KCE and PassKey both declined to comment on the situation.

Like other large holders of merchant ERCOT storage, there was concern that potential investors were not ascribing much value to KCE’s fleet, given the declining rates in ancillary services with the continued buildout of storage in Texas.

The sector took another huge blow this year after ERCOT admitted it had bought an average of 3.7 GW less in power reserves than its own planning model called for through its non-spin and ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service (ECRS).

KCE has 580 MW of operational storage capacity in ERCOT. NPM Interconnection queue data is tracking another five projects under development, across 426 MW.

KCE also has a pedigree in the NYISO market, but it has proven to be an expensive market to develop projects in the past. NYISO assessed system upgrade and transmission costs of over USD 90m to six projects in Cluster 24 that KCE was proposing to interconnect to PSEG Long Island, according to a cost estimates study released by NYISO

Nevertheless, the company secured USD 300m in financing with Standard Chartered in August to support its development pipeline in NYISO and MISO and proceeded to get awarded some big contracts in subsequent weeks.

The Illinois Commerce Commission approved two bids from KCE a few weeks later, amongst five bids total, from the Illinois Power Agency’s 2026 Energy Storage RFP. The projects, each 100 MW / 400 MWh projects were to be built in Ameren Illinois territory in MISO.

Then, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) awarded roughly 250 MW / 1,000 MWh, across two projects to KCE as part of its bulk storage solicitation.

Another source noted that KCE also might be approaching the project financing market soon to finance a Michigan project after the state regulator cleared a project—KCE MI 2–submitted by DTE Electric as part of a broader special contract to bring over 1.3 GW of capacity to support a data center project in Washtenaw County, Michigan.