Presidio’s history-making battery quietly phased out
PRESIDIO — On the night of a particularly contentious runoff election in Presidio, the lights went out with just hours on the clock, leaving election staff scrambling.
Election Administrator Florcita Zubia was able to get her husband to transport generators from Marfa in the nick of time, but the outage left many locals wondering: what about the big battery that promised to solve the city’s chronic power outage problem over a decade ago?
The issue re-entered the city’s political discourse in May of this year, when a presentation by Dr. Ken Wisian of UT-Austin about a potential geothermal energy project in Presidio referenced the battery. City officials informed Wisian that they thought the unit had been phased out with little fanfare.
The battery — affectionately referred to as BOB, or the “Big Ol’ Battery” — was installed in 2010. The battery was designed to hold on to enough grid power that it could keep the city’s lights on for up to eight hours in an emergency. In the years leading up to BOB’s debut, Presidio residents faced chronic blackouts and brownouts, thanks to a wildly outdated transmission line from Marfa that had been erected just after the end of World War II.
In layman’s terms, BOB was a big deal. The battery was the largest and among the first of its kind, and its creative municipal application earned write-ups in publications as big as National Geographic and the New York Times. Dignitaries from the distant lands of Japan and Ohio traveled to the small border town for the opening celebration. “One of the oldest cities in the United States will benefit from one of the world’s newest technology developments,” screamed a Big Bend Sentinel headline in April 2010.
BOB was even the subject of an original country song performed at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “It’s a big old battery on the end of town that keeps the lights going when the grid goes down,” went the chorus. “Thank you BOB!”
The cost of the battery and its accompanying substation were the product of a nearly $23 million investment in Presidio’s infrastructure by AEP’s joint-venture with Berkshire Hathaway, Electric Transmission Texas (ETT). Its installation was bundled with a $10,000 donation to Presidio ISD to fund its math and science programs.
Transporting the Japanese-manufactured technology was no small feat. When BOB was operational, 80 boxes wrapped in ceramic helped warm the fussy sodium-sulfur mix to its ideal temperature. The boxes were transported by ship across the Pacific Ocean and were temporarily stored in Marfa before a wagon train of 24 trucks carried them down to their final destination on the border. The battery was eventually housed in a building near Lucy Rede Franco Middle School isolated from residential streets — a location chosen in part because the battery was noisy when it kicked on.
In the early days, the experimental technology suffered fits and starts. Just two months after the headline-making opening ceremony, BOB failed to kick on during a major power outage caused by a storm.
BOB’s first failure happened to fall on Presidio High School’s graduation night. The school decided to delay the ceremony, and the crowd sat in the stands at Manuel O. Hernandez Stadium waiting for the lights to come back on. After a few hours, they decided to proceed in the dark. Speeches were given on a small battery-powered speaker, and the graduates made their way across the stage guided by flashlights.
Presidians were not happy. AEP went on the defense, explaining that all the kinks had not yet been worked out. The battery had been fully charged, but the mechanism that kicked it on automatically wasn’t working. “Thank you for your patience during the battery transition period,” read a half-page ad taken out the next week in the Presidio International.
A few months later, the battery was fully operational and faded from local headlines. Its day-to-day operation and repair were handled by AEP. Local officials had little say in or notice about its inner workings — hence the confusion, over a decade later, about when and how the battery would need an upgrade.
In 2022, Mayor John Ferguson received a letter from Peter Kimani, regulatory and finance director for AEP, with notice that Bob would be phased out by 2025 and would not be replaced. “ETT will continue its partnership with the City of Presidio by ensuring reliable transmission
service from the radial transmission line from Marfa to Presidio,” Kimani assured officials. “This line has proven to be extremely reliable for the last decade.”
Kimani explained that the battery’s quiet retirement was not due to AEP’s negligence or lack of interest in the project. The plan had originally been to replace the sodium-sulfur battery with a more modern lithium-ion setup at the end of BOB’s life, but shifts in state regulations made it unclear whether or not the company was legally able to operate the battery.
AEP is a transfer company, not a company that generates power or provides it directly to consumers. HB 415, passed in 2021, prohibited transfer companies from owning storage batteries.
HB 415 was passed in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri that caused widespread grid failure across Texas. Presidio’s power stayed on during the storm, leading many to speculate that BOB had saved the day. (AEP officials themselves were unable to confirm the theory and could not provide a clear explanation to The Big Bend Sentinel.)
A series of new laws were passed after the devastating storm in the hopes of protecting the Texas grid. Lack of state regulation makes storing energy a lucrative business: prices can fluctuate sharply depending on demand — making the relationships between energy producers, transfer companies and providers complicated.
To date, there are no other batteries like BOB operating in Texas, though similar programs have proven successful in states like California and Ohio.
Battery technology does have a place in other evolving markets, like wind and solar. With help from the Big Bend Conservation Alliance, the city is exploring adding solar panels to the Presidio Activity Center. The panels would be hooked to a battery that can keep the Presidio Activity Center open as a shelter during emergencies.
Mayor Ferguson was hopeful that Presidio could continue to be a leader in new energy technologies and was particularly enthusiastic about the potential geothermal energy project that would pull power from far underground. “I’d love to think that 50 years down the line, we can look at Presidio back in 2024 and say, ‘Wow. Remember the old days?’”