Factories aimed at making products for the battery energy storage system (BESS) industry have been announced by Turkey-headquartered Kontrolmatik and Ireland-headquartered Eaton.
Kontrolmatik Technology, Energy and Engineering Inc began development activities at the beginning of April to build a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery factory with 1GWh annual production capacity in the US.
The company is already building a facility of the same size in Ankara, Turkey, through a subsidiary called Pomega Energy Storage Technologies, targeting the promising Turkish market and wider EMEA region, which is expected to open before the end of this year.
Kontrolmatik is involved in everything from EPC contracting to system integration and manufacture of equipment for power generation, transmission and distribution as well as energy storage.
It launched a US subsidiary, Kontrolmatik Technologies at the beginning of this year, headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
On its US expansion, the company said it is targeting grid-scale battery energy storage service opportunities as an integrator, developer and battery manufacturer, aiming for full vertical integration and supply chain management capabilities.
It is also exploring opportunities in the commercial and industrial (C&I) market segments and will pursue both front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter markets, including standalone and solar-plus-storage systems.
Site selection options are already being explored and a decision is expected to be announced in June.
The facility would join a handful of others in a sector which remains largely underserved by domestic manufacturing, despite soaring market demand.
So far, while the development of electric vehicle (EV) battery gigafactories are on their way at numerous major sites in the US, Energy-Storage.news has so far only reported on planned new factories to produce LFP cells and systems from KORE Power, building a 12GWh factory in Arizona, SPARKZ, with a factory on the way in West Virginia and American Battery Factory, which hasn’t made concrete disclosures of its plans but claims it could open its first 3GWh facility within two years.
Eaton targets expanding UPS and data centre markets
Power management tech company Eaton said yesterday that it is building a critical power management systems production campus in Vantaa, Finland, which it claimed will be state-of-the-art.
The Vantaa plant is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2023 and lead to Eaton recruiting about 100 new staff. The facility will manufacture grid-interactive UPS equipment as well as energy storage systems.
It will also serve as Eaton’s centre for excellence in data centres, a market the company has been focused on for some time, and it will be sited geographically close to Scandinavia’s booming market. The Vantaa plant will also become Eaton’s Critical Power Solutions headquarters, targeting all UPS demand segments including commercial and industrial (C&I) buildings.
Eaton said it is seeing strong growth in demand for UPS. The new factory will move the company’s current activities from another smaller factory elsewhere in Espoo, Finland and enable expansion.
It has a planned size of 16,500 m2, although annual production capacity was not disclosed and an Energy-Storage.news enquiry had not been replied to by the time of publication.
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