OCI Holdings is accelerating its expansion into the North American energy storage system (ESS) business in partnership with the U.S. energy company LG Energy Solution.
OCI Holdings announced on the 27th that its U.S. subsidiary OCI Energy has signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MOU) regarding the North American ESS business with Texas energy company CPS Energy and LG Energy Solution’s subsidiary Vertech. CPS Energy is the largest regional energy corporation in the U.S., supplying electricity and natural gas to about 1.28 million households in Texas.
OCI Energy plans to sign a supply contract with LG Energy Solution’s Vertech to procure batteries for ESS and will sell the electricity collected from solar energy stored during the day to CPS Energy.
They intend to expand their collaboration on a pipeline of 13 ESS projects totaling approximately 3 gigawatts (GW) owned by OCI Energy, starting with the ‘Alamo City ESS LLC’ project, which is nearing completion by the end of 2026.
The Alamo City ESS LLC project is a solar power plant that integrates a 120-megawatt (MW) solar facility with an ESS capacity of 480 megawatt-hours (MWh) on a site of about 42,000 pyeong in Bexar County, southeast Texas.
OCI Energy announced the development of the Alamo City ESS LLC project last December and signed a storage capacity agreement (SCA) with CPS Energy for long-term ESS storage capacity, agreeing to provide power to the San Antonio area through CPS Energy for the next 20 years.
A representative of OCI Holdings noted, “We formed a strategic partnership with LG Energy Solution, which has multiple production bases in North America, to respond to external uncertainties, including tariffs. We will strengthen tripartite cooperation on North American ESS projects that can supplement the intermittency of solar power and enable sustainable power supply.”