When engineer Bruce Townsend walks around this hot and dusty construction site in El Centro, it is not the massive gas-fired power plant nearby that catches his imagination. His eyes are planted firmly on the future of energy — and the low-slung metal building that will house it.

“This is really going to take off,” Townsend said. Townsend was referring to a nearly $38 million battery, the largest battery of its kind in the western U.S. He was the venture’s original project manager.