Eolian has announced the close of a $463 million financing package, arranged by Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking, to support the ongoing construction of Padua 2 and Padua 3 – two large-scale battery energy storage systems totalling 350MW/1.7GWh in Bexar County, Texas.
This funding enables the final build-out of the Padua Complex, which will become the largest BESS development in Texas and one of the largest globally.
Once completed in spring 2026, all three phases of the Padua Complex will deliver 400 MW/1.8GWh of instant-ramping capacity. The BESS site is strategically located at a substation near the retiring J.K. Spruce coal units and ageing V.H. Braunig gas plant, a key point for south-to-north transmission flows in Texas.
Padua 1, a 50MW, two-hour system, is already operational. Padua 2 and 3 – 150MW and 200MW respectively – each offer approximately five-hour discharge durations. All BESS phases use Tesla battery equipment.
“Texas and the Padua Complex demonstrate how building battery energy storage at this speed and scale to meet urgent market needs and to better use the existing transmission network will act as a vital bridge between now and 2030, buying time to allow other technologies to scale and ramp up production and deployment while enabling continued load growth”, said Aaron Zubaty, CEO of Eolian.
