Elevate Renewables, an ArcLight portfolio company, has acquired the Prospect Power battery energy storage project from Swift Current Energy in the US. The asset is a 150 MW / 600 MWh standalone BESS located in Rockingham County, Virginia, close to Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley.

The key insight is structural: buyers are prioritising late-stage, fully contracted BESS near load over development optionality. Prospect Power is already under construction, fully contracted under a 15-year PPA with Dominion Energy, and expected to reach commercial operations in mid-2026. Execution risk is largely burned off before ownership transfer.

The project was financed in September 2025 with $242 million in project debt from Truist Securities, CIBC, KeyBank, and Natixis, alongside secured tax equity. That capital stack signals lender comfort with long-dated contracted storage in PJM, even as merchant volatility and interconnection risk rise elsewhere.

Commercially, this transaction reflects how capital is underwriting storage today. PJM’s capacity constraints, driven by data centers, AI workloads, and electrification, are pushing investors toward assets that sit directly in constrained load zones with fixed revenues. Location and offtake matter more than upside optionality.

For the market, the signal is clear. Large infrastructure buyers are paying for certainty and proximity to load, not early-stage pipeline scale. Contracted BESS near hyperscale demand is becoming core infrastructure, not a discretionary growth bet.

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