Austin energy startup Base Power is continuing its expansion in North Texas. 

In August 2025, the company opened an office and warehouse in Grapevine with around 10 full-time employees. Today, it has more than 100 employees and more than 50% of its customer base in Dallas-Fort Worth. It also recently inked a deal with Dallas-based Hillwood Communities to offer its home battery backup system to nearly 6,500 homes in three North Texas communities. 

“The original thesis, and the thesis still today, is that the U.S. grid needs a lot of help,” co-founder and COO Justin Lopas said during a presentation at the Venture Dallas conference Oct. 22. “It needs a lot more capacity, and we think we have a unique, novel way to add capacity to the grid quickly.”

Growth heats up

Investors are taking note of the growth. According to TechCrunch, Base Power raised $1 billion in a Series D round in August, less than a year after raising $1 billion in the previous round. The latest fundraise values the company at $13 billion.

Base Power is installing around 100 batteries at single-family homes a day, with 50 in the DFW area, Lopas said. By the end of the year, he expects the company will have deployed roughly a gigawatt-hour of capacity. Demand on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid hit a record 91.1 gigawatts on July 22, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Texas was an obvious choice for the company’s headquarters and initial growth, Lopas said, citing its status as an energy capital, its talent pool and its business climate.

“We’ve found that it is frankly easier and lower friction and better to do business in Texas than where we’ve started expanding outside of Texas,” he said. “This is the best place to do business in the country by far. There’s also just a huge market.”

How Base Power will work in Hillwood homes 

Under the company’s deal with Hillwood Communities, new and existing homeowners in three neighborhoods — Treeline by Hillwood in Justin, Pecan Square by Hillwood in Northlake and Harvest by Hillwood in Argyle and Northlake — will be eligible for Base battery systems to provide power during outages. At full build-out, about 9,500 homes in the three subdivisions will have access to Base battery systems.

“From winter storms and extreme summer heat to tornadoes, North Texans know how quickly severe weather can disrupt daily life,” Andrew Pieper, senior vice president of Hillwood Communities, said in a statement announcing the program. “Through this partnership, we’re giving homeowners a cost-effective way to prepare for power outages while supporting the broader electric grid.”

Base offers its service through agreements with local utilities and electric cooperatives in areas where homeowners cannot choose their electricity provider. Elsewhere, the company serves as a retail electricity provider. Last year, Base qualified for ERCOT’s Aggregated Distributed Energy Resource program, which allows it to pool capacity from individual home batteries and sell it in the market. 

With the Hillwood communities, Base is working with the electricity co-op CoServ. Hillwood homeowners will receive preferred pricing, according to the announcement. Base owns the batteries and provides any needed service. Its Base Core battery provides 39.2 kilowatt-hours and up to 36 hours of backup, depending on usage. The backup kicks in automatically when power goes out.

“We’re building energy infrastructure that can add capacity where people live,” Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO of Base Power and son of Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, said in a statement. “Hillwood’s communities give us an opportunity to do that at scale. Together, we can put technology to work for thousands of households while supporting our grid.”

Hillwood and Base plan to extend the partnership beyond the three initial communities to future homes served by CoServ in Landmark by Hillwood in Denton and Lantern by Hillwood in Pilot Point. And the partners are looking toward further expansion.

“Building strong communities means thinking about the needs of our residents over the long term,” said Fred Balda, president of Hillwood Communities. “While we’re focusing on North Texas now, this partnership will evolve throughout our development platform where feasible, including our investments in Austin, Houston, Florida and the Northeast as Base is ready to serve those markets.”