His father helped put a computer in millions of homes. Now, Zach Dell wants to put a battery in them. The son of Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, has co-founded a startup hoped to become America’s next big power company. Base Power is racing to build and install tens of thousands of batteries in residential backyards and become one of the country’s largest developers of battery storage. The three-year-old company just locked down a $1 billion funding round that brings its valuation to $13 billion and has raised more than $2.5 billion in all.The funding round was led by Ribbit Capital, Addition, Valor Equity Partners and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group, which is part of the firm’s Security and Resiliency Initiative. Interestingly, Dell’s own father is not a backer.Base has installed more than 23,000 batteries across Texas and the Chicago area, a market it entered earlier this year. “We have so much to do and so much room to grow, and we’re very early in the scope of the opportunity,” Dell said, adding that the company plans to enter more states and, eventually, international markets. It does roughly 100 installations a day and expects to double the count by the year-end. So far, it has about 550 megawatt-hours installed, equal to a large, utility-sized storage project.
