Electricity is the lifeblood of the modern economy, and it’s only becoming more critical. AI demands it in increasing droves, transportation is rapidly electrifying, and the materials and industrial processes that enable modern society, such as steel and industrial heat, depend on its abundance.
In line with the gravity of this fundamental force, we’re proud to deepen our partnership with Base Power for their Series C.
Base has a compelling offering that solves a real problem
The US power grid today is on the precipice of massive change. For the past two decades, increasing efficiency has led to virtually no change in electricity demand (both in terms of energy and power). However, AI and the electrification of industry and transportation are portending a step-change in energy demand.
In ERCOT (Texas’ grid operator), peak summer demand is forecasted to grow 51 GW in the next five years (the equivalent of 51 nuclear reactors). Nationally, power demand from AI alone is forecasted to grow by over 100 GW in the same period. Yet, historic capacity additions to the grid are insufficient to meet this demand growth. New generation capacity faces interconnection queues that are years long and only growing longer, and the electrical transmission and distribution infrastructure is already strained as curtailments in ERCOT increase year-over-year. Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electrons today, but this increases volatility in net load to the grid (and therefore, wholesale market prices).
Against this backdrop, distributed energy storage, deployed directly at homes, has emerged as an essential component of the solution — and why Base stands out as a category-defining company with its distributed batteries and energy services. Distributed batteries don’t face the same interconnection queue hurdles, enabling faster deployment (in fact, Base Power reports it’s deploying more MW of storage per month than a typical utility-scale plant in ERCOT). Locating storage at the point of load growth blunts the need for additional distribution-level grid investment. And, storage offsets the intermittency from renewables and stabilizes wholesale market prices through wholesale market arbitrage. We’re convinced Base provides a smarter, faster, and more resilient approach.
The Series C allows Base to scale
Base’s success depends in large part on achieving a lower installed battery cost than the competition; the path forward is dependent on their ability to successfully vertically integrate and scale. With the $1B raised in their Series C, we believe Base can materialize their vision of a domestic supply chain that deploys batteries en masse — designed by Base, manufactured domestically by Base, retailed to customers, installed by Base, and operated by Base.
Scale allows Base to provide more residents the peace of mind knowing that inclement weather won’t turn off the lights and to support the grid more effectively in times of peak demand.
Moreover, the opportunity to scale is undeniable — there are millions of single-family homes in Texas and tens of millions across the U.S. Base is already installed in thousands of homes today, with over 100 MWh deployed across Texas (roughly the size of a utility-scale installation). And while still unknown to many, so-called “Gen-tailers” (companies that generate power and sell it directly to consumers), such as Constellation Energy (over $100B market cap), are now among the largest companies in the US by market cap.
Base’s exceptional team is expanding
Base has a truly exceptional team with some of the most ambitious and brightest minds we’ve seen. Between Justin’s deep manufacturing expertise and experience with building hardware from first principles and Zach’s extensive investing experience, we believe that the founding team is as strong as we’ve ever seen.
The high caliber of talent across the company is evident in the previous companies the team has joined Base from — Tesla, SpaceX, Anduril, Ramp, Apple, Blackstone, Bain, and others.
We strongly encourage anyone interested in reinventing America’s power system to check out basepowercompany.com/careers.
The content here should not be viewed as investment advice, nor does it constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. The views expressed here are those of the individual Lightspeed Management Company, L.L.C. (“Lightspeed”) personnel and are not the views of Lightspeed or its affiliates; other market participants could take different views.
Unless otherwise indicated, the inclusion of any third-party firm and/or company names, brands and/or logos does not imply any affiliation with these firms or companies.
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