Elevate Renewables sees nationwide potential for BESS assets paired with existing thermal generation

Elevate Renewables, owned by private equity funds managed by ArcLight Capital Partners, aims to expand its business of pairing battery storage to traditional generation plants nationwide, starting with its parent company’s fleet in Connecticut.

Founded in 2022, the company last week announced BESS developments that will be built on-site at the Middletown Generating Station, Montville Generating Station, Bridgeport Harbor Station, New Haven Harbor Station, and the Devon Power Station in Connecticut, and will be available to come online in 2026 and 2027.

They’re going big. Founder and Head of Development Eric Cherniss told NPM that the projects in the Connecticut portfolio will all be sized in the “hundreds of megawatts.” Their aim is balancing reliability and reduction of carbon emissions as the energy transition evolves.

“We’re filling a thermal power plant gap that is fairly significant,” he said. “It's important for these assets to be somewhat equivalent in size.”

Elevate’s philosophy, according to Cherniss, is centered around the reuse “or more fulsome use of the existing infrastructure.” That has translated largely to brownfield development.

This head start on land acquisition gives Elevate a leg up, given the challenging nature of securing all the necessary regulatory requirements for energy projects “especially in places like Connecticut in the Northeast,” Cherniss said.

“[With brownfields], you have a manageable environment,” said Cherniss, “and you're creating an almost immediate net benefit not just regionally but for the local community as well.”

Elevate is actively pursuing projects in California ISO, PJM, ERCOT, SPP and MISO. They aim to build in all major markets, Cherniss said.

Their team includes energy industry alums from across the country, allowing for pattern recognition across disparate markets and the opportunity to exert policy influence in emerging ones to make sure the “inevitability” of the energy transition away from legacy thermal resources is managed well, Cherniss said.

The company is starting this expansion in-house, focused on generation plants owned by funds managed by ArcLight Capital Partners. Elevate will also engage other owners of thermal generation sites, he said.

As more and more thermal generation plants are slated for retirement, Cherniss believes co-location, generation replacement and hybridization will put Elevate at the “crux of reliability and decarbonization.”

But with that opportunity comes the complexity of shepherding a massive battery through the pre-development process to completion.

“We really haven't gone through a systematic change like this in our history as a nation. When we made significant changes — decades ago — that was under a different regulatory environment, a lot more fully regulated, where transmission owners and generation owners were (often) under the same parent company,” he said. “It takes a lot of coordination. And Elevate is purpose-built to wade into that and is executing on projects across the country.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.

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