GridPoint Re-Enters Commercial Battery Storage at 100 to 500 kW, Buying Cabinets Off the Shelf

GridPoint counts roughly 21,000 customer sites across North America and considers about 13,000 of them attractive for batteries. Chief executive Adrian De Luca told Latitude Media on November 4 that the building energy management company is returning to commercial storage after more than two decades away, with initial project proposals landing between 100 kW and 500 kW in California, PJM and parts of the Northeast. MISO is under evaluation.

The hardware decision. GridPoint plans to buy off-the-shelf battery systems and pair them with its own controller rather than manufacture. De Luca said “the switch has been flipped” on equipment costs, retail electricity prices and the multi-year runway of the investment tax credit.

The chemistry question sitting behind any hardware commitment moved the same day. Peak Energy’s chief executive told pv magazine USA that the company competes with LFP on price and beats it on total cost of ownership, while conceding site-level energy density roughly 15% below LFP. Peak opened a Sacramento factory in July 2026 with a 4 GWh annual target and expects close to 1 GWh of deployment next year, after closing a $108 million Series B led by GM Ventures on October 21.

What GridPoint carries into the market. The company already controls HVAC, refrigeration and lighting at multi-site commercial customers and holds the consumption data those systems generate. It intends to use that data to size systems and to cut customer acquisition costs, and to own and operate the assets at those sites rather than sell them. The sequence is bill savings and demand charge optimisation first, with grid services layered in afterwards. GridPoint has named Base Power and Branch Energy as competitors.

The cabinet market the decision assumes. HIZENERGY presented a C&I lineup for Europe in the past week led by the ENERBOX, an all-in-one AC-coupled cabinet at 125 kW with 261 kWh or 313 kWh of capacity, expandable through cabinet paralleling. The company states the units have passed UL 9540A safety testing and can be fully commissioned on site within two hours. It is the sixth C&I cabinet in roughly three weeks to cluster at 125 kW and 261 kWh, following eVault, Exide, TCL SunPower, Sigenergy and Hoymiles.

UL Solutions describes UL 9540A as a test method whose data feeds the UL 9540 certification process. Passing the test produces no listing of its own. Most of these announcements cite the test results and leave the listing unstated.

The price floor under those cabinets is moving up. Huawei Digital Power told customers in an October 20 notice of increases of 5% to 15% across residential solar-plus-storage, commercial and industrial systems and utility-scale PV inverters, holding grid-forming utility-scale storage and PCS to 5% to 10%. The company cited commodity, printed circuit board and memory component costs, with LME copper above $14,700 per tonne in mid-October. Sungrow, Growatt, KSTAR, Inovance and Kehua have all raised prices since August. Huawei set no implementation date and will negotiate adjustments customer by customer.

Saft’s answer. TotalEnergies subsidiary Saft launched EnerShift on November 4, bundling feasibility studies, business-case assessment, financing, installation and long-term operational optimisation into one behind-the-meter offering. Batteries charge and discharge against electricity prices and market conditions, with Saft claiming reduced purchasing costs alongside flexibility and market-service revenue.

The reference installation is Saft’s own Bordeaux plant: a 9 MWh LFP system built from three 3 MWh Intensium Shift containers, commissioned in September 2025, able to carry the whole site for four hours. Saft reports roughly a 15% cut in annual electricity costs and payback near five years including market revenue. BEST Magazine notes those figures are Saft’s own and remain independently unverified. Markets, pricing and contract terms were left undisclosed. The claimed savings rest on energy purchasing cost and electricity-market services, with no demand-charge component.

The incumbent’s position. Stem took the asset-light software route early and is now the cautionary reference. Q2 2026 revenue came in at $33.7 million, down 12% from $38.4 million a year earlier, with software, services and edge hardware revenue up 1% to $33.4 million and a fifth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. The company received an NYSE listing-standards notice on October 20, owes the exchange a compliance plan in early December, and its board put the company itself on the table in late October after closing a strategy review on October 1. On November 4 it moved its Q3 earnings call from November 5 to November 16, citing scheduling and logistics.

Three companies, three claims on where the margin sits. GridPoint bets on the customer relationship and the interval data behind it. Saft bets on its own cells wrapped in financing and market optimisation. Stem bets on software. In each structure the capital stays with the vendor.

What distinguishes GridPoint’s entry is the qualification asset. Years of HVAC, lighting and refrigeration data at 21,000 sites answer the sizing question before anyone visits the building. That is the expensive step in a 100 to 500 kW project, where engineering and development cost stays roughly flat as the system shrinks.

The open variable. Hardware selection determines which buildings GridPoint can reach. The cabinets converging at 125 kW and 261 kWh cite UL 9540A test results without stating a UL 9540 listing, which suggests outdoor siting rather than installation inside an occupied building; that reading is an inference from the listing gap, not a specification any of the vendors has published. A retrofit inside an occupied commercial building runs through a fire-code review that turns on the certification document the equipment carries. GridPoint has named no supplier.

GridPoint is also holding off on data center capacity deals over regulatory risk, a position it has taken while sitting on 21,000 commercial sites.

That leaves a business underwritten on published demand charges in California, PJM and the Northeast. Those tariffs, and the 5% to 15% equipment increases arriving against 2027 install dates, will decide how many of the 13,000 sites become projects.

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