Energy storage startup Base Power began selling its massive home battery systems to Illinois residents yesterday, Canary Media reported. Above all, this will be the startup’s first foray into the territory of the network operated by PJM Interconnection, the largest American network operator by territory, and which has particularly had difficulty coping with a wave of new data centers.
Beyond Illinois, PJM’s territory includes Northern Virginia, one of the densest data center regions on the planet. This density, coupled with a lack of new generation sources, has driven up wholesale electricity prices in PJM. almost double in the last year. The electricity crisis became so severe that AEP, one of the region’s largest utilities, threatened to leave the market.
Basic power launched two years ago in Texas to build a virtual power plant focused on residential batteries. Base’s batteries, starting at 25 kilowatt hours, are larger than those of most of its competitors, and rather than selling the batteries, it requires customers to buy electricity from them. In Illinois, its rates are 25% lower than ComEd.
The startup’s timing has also been impeccable. Base currently operates more than 500 megawatt hours of battery storage in Texas, charging when electricity prices are cheap and distributing it when the grid needs it most.
Its entry into the PJM network comes at a time when the operator is under scrutiny for mismanaging growing electricity demand. PJM had suspended applications for new generation sources from 2022, only reopening the queue in April. Unlike Base, the timing couldn’t have been worse: demand for electricity has skyrocketed over the past four years.
Base’s deployment has accelerated since October, when it announced a Billion-dollar funding round led by Addition. This cycle closely followed a $200 million funding round which Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Valor Equity Partners led in April 2025.
Historically, PJM has been slow to adopt new technologies such as distributed energy storage, but Base’s residential focus allows it to bypass the sclerotic grid operator.
“We’re deploying capacity behind the meter in residences, where an interconnection already exists, so we’re not waiting in the interconnection queue,” Zach Dell, founder and CEO of Base Power, told Canary Media.
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Tim De Chant is senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. He has written for a wide range of publications, including Wired magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Ars Technica, The Wire China, and NOVA Next, where he was a founding editor.
De Chant is also a lecturer in MIT’s graduate science writing program, and he received a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018, during which time he studied climate technologies and explored new business models for journalism. He received his doctorate in environmental science, policy and management from the University of California, Berkeley, and his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, English and biology from St. Olaf College.
You can contact or check Tim’s outreach by sending an email tim.dechant@techcrunch.com.
