2026 revenue below $2/kW-mo
Yes, ERCOT battery revenue is still falling. It was about $4.6/kW-month in 2024 and $2.5 in 2025. So far in 2026, the monthly bars on our ERCOT leaderboard average $1.9 (Read how we compute ERCOT BESS revenue). January gave us a bump to $3.7, but that was just the storm. No month since has crossed $3.
We wanted to check how batteries vary in revenue, and why. SCED disclosures give us a treasure trove of data, but it needs some serious data mining. We thought it was worth it. So what did we find?
We looked at about 300 batteries with at least 30 days of market settlement data. The median battery earned $1.5/kW-month. The top 10% made $2.8 or higher. That's a big difference.
Why is the median below $1.9? The $1.9 splits the whole fleet’s dollars over all its kW, so the big batteries count most, and they earned more per kW. The median is just the battery in the middle.
Let’s take a look at the top and bottom 20 projects to see how they are spread out.
Top and bottom 20 ERCOT batteries by revenue
Here are the top 20 sites by revenue
| Rank | Project | Settling days | Recorded owner | Recorded QSE | $/kW-month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palacios | 189 | Excelsior Energy Capital | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $6.14 |
| 2 | Junction North BESS | 160 | Adapture Renewables | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $5.60 |
| 3 | Shamrock Energy Storage | 211 | NextEra Energy Resources | NextEra Energy Marketing LLC | $4.89 |
| 4 | Connolly BESS | 211 | Tesla Energy | ENGIE Energy Marketing NA Inc | $4.27 |
| 5 | Lumina II BESS | 211 | IPX Power | IP Lumina II LLC | $4.24 |
| 6 | Roadrunner Crossing Energy Storage (unit 2) | 211 | NextEra Energy Resources | NextEra Energy Marketing LLC | $4.15 |
| 7 | Roadrunner Crossing Energy Storage (unit 1) | 211 | NextEra Energy Resources | NextEra Energy Marketing LLC | $4.02 |
| 8 | Borden County BESS | 211 | Aypa Power | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $3.74 |
| 9 | Inertia Energy Storage | 211 | NextEra Energy Resources | NextEra Energy Marketing LLC | $3.57 |
| 10 | Blue Summit II Storage | 176 | NextEra Energy Resources | NextEra Energy Marketing LLC | $3.53 |
| 11 | TX13 Endurance Park Storage | 211 | Key Capture Energy | Gridmatic Equisetum LLC | $3.38 |
| 12 | Olmito BESS | 123 | Daiwa Energy & Infrastructure | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $3.37 |
| 13 | Antlia BESS | 211 | ENGIE North America | ENGIE Energy Marketing NA Inc | $3.32 |
| 14 | Burksol Energy Storage | 211 | esVolta | ESV Energy Management LLC | $3.27 |
| 15 | Westover BESS | 210 | Gore Street Energy Storage Fund | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $3.23 |
| 16 | Sweetwater ESS | 203 | Gore Street Energy Storage Fund | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $3.22 |
| 17 | Avila BESS | 211 | ENGIE North America | ENGIE Energy Marketing NA Inc | $3.21 |
| 18 | Medina Lake | 153 | Excelsior Energy Capital | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $3.11 |
| 19 | TX10 Hummingbird Storage | 211 | Key Capture Energy | Mercuria Energy America LLC | $3.04 |
| 20 | St Gall Energy Storage II | 211 | Jupiter Power | Jupiter Power Energy Management LLC | $3.03 |
And the bottom 20
| Rank | Project | Settling days | Recorded owner | Recorded QSE | $/kW-month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 288 | KCE TX 8 | 211 | Key Capture Energy | Shell Energy North America (US) LP | $0.54 |
| 289 | Buda BESS | 49 | Stella Energy Solutions | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.54 |
| 290 | Texas Waves - Pyron | 167 | RWE | RWE Americas QSE LLC | $0.49 |
| 291 | Crane BESS | 59 | Excelsior Energy Capital | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.46 |
| 292 | Destiny Storage | 109 | Cypress Creek Renewables | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.46 |
| 293 | Sahara BESS | 126 | Greenflash Infrastructure | GF Energy Marketing LLC | $0.45 |
| 295 | Texas Waves - Inadale | 201 | RWE | RWE Americas QSE LLC | $0.42 |
| 296 | Gaia Hybrid | 130 | Sunraycer Renewables | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.36 |
| 297 | Carambola BESS | 75 | UBS Asset Management | HEI8 LLC | $0.29 |
| 300 | Solace Solar and Storage (unit 2) | 116 | Intersect Power | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.18 |
| 301 | Solace Solar and Storage (unit 1) | 118 | Intersect Power | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.18 |
| 302 | Crowned Heron 1 & 2 (unit 1) | 156 | RWE | RWE Americas QSE LLC | $0.13 |
| 303 | Arroyo Storage | 32 | Goshe Energy Storage | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $0.11 |
| 305 | KCE TX 2 | 211 | Key Capture Energy | South Texas Electric Co Op Inc | $-0.11 |
| 306 | Padua 3 | 31 | Eolian | Tenaska Power Services (TRQ) | $-0.16 |
| 307 | Vertus Energy Storage | 116 | Alpha Omega Power | NRG Texas Power LLC | $-0.16 |
| 309 | Hermes Storage | 51 | X-ELIO | TotalEnergies Gas and Power North America Inc | $-0.25 |
| 310 | Crowned Heron 1 & 2 (unit 2) | 96 | RWE | RWE Americas QSE LLC | $-0.34 |
| 311 | Johnson City BESS | 207 | Pedernales Electric Cooperative | Lower Colorado River Authority | $-0.91 |
| 312 | Castor Energy Storage | 76 | ENGIE North America | ENGIE Energy Marketing NA Inc | $-2.08 |
We wanted to find out what separates high revenue sites from low revenue ones. Is it only about who owns or dispatches them? From the above two tables alone you can see that ENGIE, Key Capture Energy and Excelsior each have batteries in both the top and bottom 20. Tenaska is a name that you will find in both the tables too. So it is not about the who. It is something more.
We turned our attention to a site-by-site comparison instead, pairing sites which are otherwise similar but differ in their revenue rates. Let’s take a look at some examples we found interesting. Actual dispatch and price data are used but the names are withheld.
Case 1: Bidding strategy
8 May 2026: Site A and Site B were both online, both with sufficient SoC levels. Each had sent ERCOT an energy bid/offer curve (EBOC), the prices at which it will charge or discharge each megawatt. Every five minutes, SCED, ERCOT’s dispatch engine, sets each battery’s base point, the MW it’s told to run at.
- Site A offered its first megawatt at $28/MWh, then dropped it to $15 at 21:15. Its node price (SPP), the price at the site, stayed between $49 and $57. SCED gave it a base point of 6 to 8 MW in every run.
- Site B asked $62 to $68 in contrast. Its node price sat between $45 and $48, and SCED didn’t dispatch it.
Site B also set aside more of its capacity for reserves, ERCOT’s standby services, in every run. So the bids line up with the dispatch, but they may not be the whole story.
Case 2: Real-time differences
Let’s take a look at a pair of sites with similar rating and duration, and also similar TB4 spread. In this case, Site C and Site D are essentially a twin setup. They even share the same QSE and optimizer.
On TB4, they’re nearly the same, averaging $66 and $70/MWh this year. Their 15-minute real-time prices are another matter. At 17:15 on 18 June, they were $421/MWh apart. Both were charging that hour. Site C purchased at about −$65/MWh, so it was paid to charge, while Site D purchased at about $340, netting a real-time revenue difference of about $5,000 in a single hour.
Case 3: Site availability
Now let’s take a look at operational issues. Here, Site E and Site F had exactly the same node price from 21 to 23 July. Site E had a forced outage on the afternoon of 21 July. The outage record ended that evening, but ERCOT’s dispatch data showed Site E offline for 54 hours in all, until 23 July. During that time, its node price hit $350/MWh.
Site E kept sending offers the whole time, but SCED doesn’t dispatch a battery marked offline. Site F, seeing the same prices, stayed online and kept running.
What we learned
These case studies show that dispatch strategy, bidding and operational issues still make a big difference, separating skills from chance. We will continue digging into the data and publish more findings. Open to answering questions on any specific site from the public data.