Terraflow Energy, which is a year-old energy storage startup based in Katy, has unveiled major expansion plans to reshape how Texas handles the surging power demands of artificial intelligence.
Last week, the company announced that it will build a 100,000-square-foot headquarters and manufacturing facility in Katy, but its largest projects are slated for Victoria, about 125 miles southwest of Houston. There, Terraflow Energy committed to a one-gigawatt storage project with enough to power 250,000 homes for 10 hours and a factory capable of producing two gigawatts of storage capacity annually. This expansion is expected to add more than 1,000 jobs at full operation.
“It’s nothing short of a massive mountain we’ve got to move to get there,” CEO Jon Parrella told an audience of several hundred attendees, including elected officials like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) who delivered special remarks.
Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries, Terraflow Energy’s vanadium-based “flow batteries” can discharge for more than 10 hours and carry a much lower fire risk.
Parrella said the technology is less about backing up wind and solar and more about stabilizing AI data centers, whose power use can spike and plunge within minutes.
“It basically acts as a shock absorber for all the power volatility, so the grid is not exposed to that,” he expressed.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw endorsed the startup’s approach. “Every once in a while, you have a technology that comes along where they don’t really make a lot of enemies,” he said in his remarks.
Terraflow Energy has also partnered with Optimus Technology Group to build an AI data center campus in Victoria, with the first gigawatt of capacity expected in three to four years.
Given that Senate Bill 6, which the Texas senate recently passed, grants ERCOT the authority to shut down data centers during peak demand, Parrella argued that policy is now working in their favor, saying that “they just basically forced everybody to buy our batteries.”
Despite nationwide clean energy setbacks, Terraflow Energy is not calling itself “green” but instead practical.
“I would call it more clean than green,” Parrella said.
