Tesla is expanding its presence in Texas with a new “Megapack” battery storage manufacturing facility in Brookshire, bringing approximately 1,500 jobs to the area. The Empire West industrial park at 111 Empire in Brookshire, located on Woods Road between Highway 90 and Interstate 10, will house Tesla’s new operations.
Posted Monday, March 24, 2025 8:49 am
FROM STAFF REPORTS
Tesla is expanding its presence in Texas with a new “Megapack” battery storage manufacturing facility in Brookshire, bringing approximately 1,500 full-time jobs to the area, according to sources at the Waller County Economic Development Partnership.
The project, located at 111 Empire Blvd. in Brookshire, has been in negotiation for three to four months, said Waller County EDP Executive Director Vince Yokum.
The county worked with the city of Brookshire on the project, Yokum said; both gave a 60% abatement on the building and qualifying manufacturing equipment during regular meetings in the first week of March. The jobs created by the project are expected to be "high paying " advanced manufacturing jobs, he said. Yokum added that he anticipated that the company will offer competitive medical benefits and possibly internships.
The Empire West industrial park, located on Woods Road between Highway 90 and Interstate 10, will house Tesla’s new operations. Tesla has leased the site since 2021, with third-party logistics firm DB Schenker managing Tesla parts. With Schenker set to move out, Tesla will take over the space to begin Megapack production, in a 1 million-square-foot facility built by Stream Realty, which originally had no tenant, but was designed to attract economic development. Tesla will also occupy a new 600,000-square-foot distribution facility at 103 Empire Blvd that will include some manufacturing capabilities, but will mainly be a warehouse to store the units. Yokum said that construction would start immediately, and that the facility is expected to be open and up and running by the end of the year.
“This is a great example of our spec building abatement program which we initiated around 2009-2010, and Brookshire also used a spec abatement for many of the buildings in Empire West,” Yokum said. “The existing building at 111 was constructed as a spec building by WCEDP partners Stream Realty. This was a great partnership between the City of Brookshire, Waler County, and Stream Realty.”
Yokom called the facility “state-of-the-art” and highlighted its role in grid stability and preventing outages, according to teslanorth.com.
Tesla’s Megapacks store electricity for renewable energy projects, helping to stabilize the grid when solar and wind power aren’t generating. According to Tesla, each Megapack unit can store over 3.9 MWh of energy, which can power around 3,600 homes for an hour. The batteries are delivered fully assembled and ready to operate, allowing for fast installation and minimal maintenance. Equipped with a 20-year warranty, each Megapack is paired with its own inverter for greater efficiency and comes with over-the-air software updates for continuous improvement.
Megapacks are primarily aimed at utilities and large-scale commercial projects and help balance renewable energy supply on the grid, discharge power during peak demand, and can even delay expensive grid infrastructure upgrades by storing power locally, the company’s website said. Additionally,
Megapacks aid in stabilizing voltage and frequency, assist in microgrid development, and support energy needs during system operator alerts, according to the website.