Equinor Starts Its Largest US Battery, 100 MW in Harlingen, and Sells Into ERCOT With No Contract

East Point Energy started commercial operations at the Citrus Flatts Energy Center. The 100 MW/200 MWh battery sits in Harlingen, Cameron County, Texas. Equinor, which owns East Point outright, announced the start-up on 3 September 2026. It is the largest battery storage project the Norwegian state-owned company has brought online in the United States. The plant will run on a fully merchant basis in the ERCOT market, with no long-term utility contract behind it.

Merchant means the battery earns what the market pays that hour. It buys power when ERCOT prices are low, sells when prices rise, and bids into ancillary services. Danske Commodities, Equinor’s trading arm, handles market operations and portfolio optimisation. That structure exposes the asset to ERCOT price spreads instead of a fixed capacity payment. Most new Texas storage is now making the same trade.

A Second Operating Asset, Not Yet a Fleet

Citrus Flatts is only East Point’s second operating project. The first was the 10 MW/20 MWh Sunset Ridge facility in Frio County, which started in 2025. Equinor says the pair can supply about 30,000 Texas homes for up to two hours. Equinor has now put five battery storage sites into commercial service in four years across its portfolio.

The company frames the start-up as a step toward what it calls a competitive, scalable position in onshore power. Christian Lie Hansen chairs the East Point board and runs Onshore Renewables Americas for Equinor. He said the start-ups underscore an ambition to grow the integrated power business. The operating numbers are smaller than that language suggests. Two operating sites is a foothold in ERCOT, not a position.

Bought, Not Built From Scratch

East Point did not develop Citrus Flatts itself. It bought the project from Black Mountain Energy Storage in late 2023. Equinor itself acquired East Point in 2022, then approved construction of both Texas batteries in 2024. The route from purchase to power was three years for a project that was already developed when it changed hands.

East Point’s next tranche is smaller than this one site. The developer has four projects totalling 80 MW/160 MWh under construction in Virginia, inside PJM. That is four separate interconnections to deliver less capacity than Citrus Flatts alone.

Why It Matters

A fully merchant battery of this size is a direct read on whether ERCOT price spreads still pay. Developers who signed tolling deals in 2023 and 2024 locked in revenue and gave up upside. Equinor has done the opposite here, and it did so with a trading desk attached. Buyers weighing storage offtake in ERCOT should watch what Citrus Flatts earns. An owner with Danske Commodities behind it sets a realistic ceiling on merchant returns. If a two-hour battery optimised by a commodity trading house cannot beat a contract, nobody’s can.

The second signal is structural. East Point moved from developer to independent power producer on this project. Developers that hold assets instead of flipping them change who competes for ERCOT queue positions. They also change who is still bidding when the merchant spread narrows.

Critical Perspective

The merchant structure is the whole risk, and Equinor has not said what spread it underwrote. A battery with no contract earns whatever ERCOT pays that hour, and ERCOT spreads compress as more storage arrives. Equinor published no revenue assumption, no expected cycles per year, and no hurdle rate for Citrus Flatts. Without one of those numbers, the claim that merchant beats a contract cannot be tested from outside.

The five-sites-in-four-years figure counts Equinor’s portfolio, not East Point’s record. In the United States, East Point has two operating projects, and it bought this one from Black Mountain Energy Storage in late 2023 rather than developing it. Equinor approved construction in 2024. A buyer reading this as evidence of a repeatable US build machine is reading a purchase.

Danske Commodities optimising an asset its own parent owns raises a question nobody has answered. The trading arm sets the bids, and the trading arm books the trading margin. Where the value lands between the plant and the desk is an internal transfer price. Third-party owners judging their own merchant returns against Equinor’s will not see the same accounting.

Sources

• Energy-Storage.News: Equinor’s East Point Energy begins operations at 200MWh Texas BESS
• Electrek: Equinor just brought its biggest US battery online in Texas
• Power Technology: Equinor starts operations at 100MW Citrus Flatts facility in Texas
• Energy Global: Equinor brings its largest energy storage project online in the US

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