Equinor’s US battery storage subsidiary, East Point Energy, brought its Citrus Flatts battery storage facility online on 3 September 2026 in Harlingen, Cameron County, Texas. The plant, rated at 100 MW/200 MWh, operates on a merchant basis in the ERCOT power market, with Equinor’s trading arm, Danske Commodities, handling its market operations and portfolio optimization. Combined with East Point’s smaller Sunset Ridge facility (10 MW/20 MWh, Frio County, operating since 2024), the two Texas assets can together supply roughly 30,000 Texas homes for up to two hours. Equinor called Citrus Flatts its largest energy storage project brought online in the US to date.
Citrus Flatts has grown modestly from its original scope: when East Point first announced the project in April 2024, it was sized at 110 MW/200 MWh and described as acquired from developer Black Mountain Energy Storage rather than developed in-house; it connects to American Electric Power’s grid. Sunset Ridge, by contrast, interconnects through South Texas Electric Cooperative and was developed by East Point itself.
East Point Energy, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, was founded in 2018 and originally ran a develop-and-sell model, selling four large-scale projects — including a 100 MW/400 MWh project known as Yadkins and a 20 MW project sold to Dominion Energy in 2021 — before Equinor acquired the company outright in July 2022 for an undisclosed price. At the time, East Point held a 4.1 GW pipeline of early- and mid-stage battery projects concentrated on the US East Coast; Equinor SVP Olav Kolbeinstveit said the deal would let Equinor “unlock the potential we see in the renewables space in the US.” Since the acquisition, East Point has increasingly retained and operated projects rather than selling them outright — pairing development with Equinor’s Danske Commodities trading desk to capture merchant power-market revenue, with Equinor targeting the higher end of its guided 4–8% returns range for renewables on these assets.
The more consequential part of East Point’s current pipeline sits not in Texas but in Virginia. The company has four additional battery storage projects under construction in Loudoun and Prince William counties, totaling 80 MW/160 MWh, expected to reach commercial operation in early 2027 within the PJM Interconnection market. That expansion follows Virginia’s SB 448, a storage law effective 1 July 2026 that raises the combined mandated storage capacity for utilities Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to 21,000 MW — roughly seven times the prior 3,100 MW target set under the state’s 2020 Clean Economy Act. The law is meant to address a stark regional gap: PJM’s 13-state territory, serving 67 million customers, currently has just over 400 MW of battery storage installed in total, compared with roughly 17,000 MW each already installed in Texas and California. “Virginia’s battery storage legislation is a real triumph,” said Evan Vaughan, an industry executive director quoted in Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism reporting on the law. “It clearly lays down a line in the sand that Virginia wants to be a leader in battery storage.”
That state-level support hasn’t guaranteed smooth local approvals, however. East Point’s proposed 150 MW Mill Stone Energy Center in Chesapeake, Virginia, was rejected 7-1 by the city’s Planning Commission amid resident opposition, and the company subsequently withdrew the proposal from a scheduled city council vote — a reminder that Virginia’s ambitious new storage mandate will still have to clear project-by-project local permitting battles similar to those facing battery storage developers elsewhere in the US.
At the Citrus Flatts commissioning, East Point Energy CEO Andrew Foukal said the project “will generate millions in tax revenue to support local priorities,” while Equinor’s VP of Onshore Renewables Americas, Christian Lie Hansen, said the start-up “underscores Equinor’s ambition to grow its integrated power business, delivering flexible and reliable energy solutions in attractive power markets.”
