MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Memphis Light, Gas and Water plans to install 125 megawatts of battery storage across nine substations in Shelby County, a project the utility says could reduce costs for ratepayers, Action News 5 reported after MLGW's presentation to the Memphis City Council on Tuesday, July 21.
The concept is straightforward. The batteries would charge overnight, when power is cheap, and discharge during peak demand hours, when the utility pays the Tennessee Valley Authority the most. Lowering the peak is how a distributor lowers what it owes its wholesale supplier. Action News 5 reported the sites span the county, from Cordova and Collierville to Whitehaven and North Memphis, and that the systems are expected to be fully operational by December 2028.
MLGW President and Chief Executive Officer Doug McGowen told the Council the project is designed to push rates "down, not up," and said a further benefit is that the utility would have additional energy to put into the grid when the system is stressed, according to Action News 5's account of the meeting.
The utility also said no electric rate increase is expected until after 2030, and that the battery project is expected to extend that timeline further.
What the reported presentation did not include is a cost. There is no publicly stated capital figure for the nine installations, no financing structure, no stated payback period, and no disclosed estimate of the annual savings on TVA demand charges that the project is supposed to produce. A claim that a capital project will hold rates down is an arithmetic claim. Without the capital cost and the projected savings, the arithmetic cannot be checked by anyone outside the utility.
Two other things are worth stating plainly. MLGW customers are finishing a rate cycle, not starting one: the utility implemented a 4 percent increase in January 2026, the final installment of a 12 percent multi-year adjustment the City Council approved in 2023, which MLGW estimated would add roughly $5 per month for the average residential customer. And MLGW remains a TVA power customer, so any project that reduces exposure to TVA peak charges is, in part, a hedge against a supply relationship the utility does not control.
Why It Matters for Memphis
MLGW is a city-owned utility. Its capital spending is public spending, and its rates are the most direct bill most Memphis households pay to a government body. A grid-scale battery program is the kind of investment that can genuinely lower long-run costs and improve reliability during heat and storm events, which is a real problem here. It is also the kind of investment where the difference between a good deal and a bad one is entirely in numbers that have not been released.
The reliability case matters too. Memphis has an outage problem that is not evenly distributed, and stored energy that can be dispatched when the grid is stressed is a legitimate part of an answer. That is a reason to take the proposal seriously, not a reason to skip the receipts.
The Oversight Question
MLGW told the Council this project pushes rates down. The utility should publish the capital cost of all nine installations, the projected annual reduction in TVA demand charges, and the payback period, before the Council votes on any funding. "It lowers rates" is a conclusion. Memphis ratepayers are entitled to the numbers that produce it.
