March 27, 2024: UK officials have declined to comment on reports that Chinese EV battery manufacturer EVE Energy is in talks to invest around £1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) in a proposed gigafactory on the outskirts of Coventry. Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, whose English Midlands region is at the center of intense media speculation about the deal, said on March 25 the area is the UK’s automotive heartland “and the logical home for the country’s next gigafactory”. Street said he would not provide a running commentary on ongoing commercial negotiations, but added that the Coventry airpo ..read more

March 27, 2024: Sky-high ambitions for widespread use of electric aircraft could face significant challenges without new technology to boost battery cycle life, according to research by the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Initial results of the lab’s research, published on March 12, show that high rates of discharge required at takeoff by electrical vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft could significantly reduce battery cycle life. Unlike EV batteries, which typically drain at a steady rate, eVTOL batteries need varying amounts of power for flight stages such as climbing, hovering a ..read more

March 27, 2024: Swedish battery developer Northvolt officially launched construction of its ‘Northvolt Drei’ gigafactory in Germany on March 25 in a ceremony attended by the nation’s political leaders. Federal chancellor Olaf Scholz and vice chancellor Robert Habeck (pictured) said the 60GWh EV cells gigafactory in Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, would underpin the country’s importance as a European manufacturing base for the auto industry. The start of construction comes less than a year after Germany’s federal and state governments said they would give financial backing for the project. Northvolt ..read more

March 27, 2024: A US Air Force base now hosts a commercially-operational 3.3GWh BESS-plus-solar facility, construction and engineering firm Mortenson has announced. The Edwards & Sanborn Solar + Energy Storage project, said by Mortenson to be the biggest in the country, reached full capacity this January, but completion of the facility has only recently been confirmed. The project spans more than 4,600 acres on land (see image) at the Edwards Air Force Base in California and includes more than 1.9 million First Solar modules with a solar generating capacity of 875MWdc (megawatts of direct ..read more

March 27, 2024: Former Tesla and Ford supply chain and battery executive Annie Liu (pictured) has joined Mangrove Lithium as chief commercial and strategy officer. Canada-headquartered Mangrove announced the appointment on March 19. Liu is a former head of supply chain, battery and energy at Tesla, where she developed and managed the company’s multi-billion-dollar partnerships and sourcing portfolio. As an executive director at the Ford Motor Company, she focused on securing the company’s battery supply chain for its Model E division. Mangrove said Liu’s appointment comes as the firm starts co ..read more

March 27, 2024: ESS Tech said on March 25 its Energy Warehouse iron flow battery storage system had been granted seismic design certification from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The system has received the highest level of IEEE 693, which ESS said makes it the first non-lithium, long-duration energy storage provider to receive the certification. The high standard demonstrates that the Energy Warehouse can withstand acceleration up to 2.5x the force of gravity and be relied upon to provide power during major seismic events, ESS said. Testing was conducted by the Pacific ..read more

March 21, 2024: Energy storage capacity in the US nearly doubled in 2023 as developers connected 7.9GW to the grid, according to latest data from the American Clean Power Association. Solar and storage led the charge as the industry added a total of nearly 34GW of new utility-scale clean energy projects to the grid, surpassing by 12.5% the previous annual installation record set in 2021, ACP said on March 7 in its Clean Power Annual Market Report*. Battery storage demonstrated near-exponential growth by almost doubling installed capacity with around 8GW installed. This brings total operating c ..read more

March 21, 2024: Li-Cycle said on March 19 “significant additional funding” will be needed before it can restart construction of its planned New York lithium battery recycling hub — and revealed the cost estimate of the project has increased to $960 million. The recycling company extended the suspension of work on its Rochester hub last November, saying then that the revised project costs could be in the range of $850 million to $1 billion. Latest cost estimates were revealed by CEO Ajay Kochhar in his presentation of full-year 2023 results. He confirmed that proposals for a recycling joint ven ..read more

March 21, 2024: ZapBatt and Toshiba launched a new battery operating system on March 19 designed to act as a “universal adapter” for battery chemistries. The system features Toshiba’s SCiB (super charge ion battery) lithium titanium oxide chemistry and can support a wide range of products including e-bikes and cordless tools and appliances, the partners said. Charles Welch, CEO and co-founder of ZapBatt said the system “acts much like an operating system that can run on any phone”. ZapBatt chief strategy officer Greg Slawson told Energy Storage Journal the cost of LTO has traditionally been mo ..read more

March 21, 2024: American Battery Factory said on March 18 it had agreed a machinery supply partnership with Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment to build the first in a planned series of LFP gigafactories in North America. Wuxi is to supply customized automated equipment for ABF’s battery cell plant in Arizona, which will have an initial production capacity up to 20GWh. The equipment includes mixing and coating to stacking and packaging machinery, plus a slurry system, cathode and anode laser chamber. ABF broke ground for the 2 million ft2 plant in Tucson last October. Completion of the plant is ta ..read more