Key Capture Energy's 9.9 MW battery storage project in West Texas. (Courtesy: Key Capture Energy)Jeff Bishop has announced his intention to step down as the chief executive officer of Key Capture Energy seven years after co-founding the battery storage developer and asset owner.
Key Capture Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of South Korea’s SK E&S, has begun its search for a new CEO. Bishop will continue to lead the company until a successor is identified.
“Dan Fitzgerald and I started with just a PowerPoint and an idea to build and operate utility-scale battery storage projects seven years ago, I’m very proud of what the Key Capture Energy team has accomplished, and I am excited about KCE’s future,” Bishop said in a press release. “We have built a market-leading team and using our unique approach of starting with small projects, learning by doing, and applying those lessons learned, KCE is expanding and growing into markets across the country to continue leading the transition to the electric grid of the future.”
Bishop became interested in the potential for battery storage while developing wind projects for EDP Renewables.
In the spring of 2016, he came across an industry analyst chart that forecasted battery storage would follow a similar cost curve as solar. Costs would plummet as deployment ramped up to support a grid ever more dependent on intermittent renewable energy resources.
“By July, I had quit my job,” Bishop said on the Factor This! podcast from Renewable Energy World.
He drained his savings to launch Key Capture Energy, a developer, owner, and operator of grid-scale battery storage projects. Bishop partnered with Fitzgerald, a colleague from their days at EDP Renewables.
Since launching in 2016, Key Capture Energy has 624 MW of standalone energy storage projects in construction and operations in the U.S., as well as a development pipeline of over 8,000 MW.
