Fluence Energy has officially started manufacturing lithium battery modules at a facility in Utah. These battery modules will incorporate battery cells manufactured in Tennessee. This marks a key step in Fluence’s strategy to scale module production with domestically sourced components to meet increasing domestic demand for utility-scale energy storage.
“Our proactive approach to securing U.S.-manufactured battery cells and rapid initiation of module production has provided us with an advantage in delivering a storage solution that allows our customers to capture the Inflation Reduction Act’s domestic content bonus tax credit,” said John Zahurancik, Fluence President, Americas. “We are moving quickly to deliver domestically manufactured energy storage solutions that meet our customers’ needs, reduce supply chain risks for projects, and support the nation’s energy independence.”
News item from Fluence
Fluence/AES/Siemens consortium is under scrutiny for a AES or Fluence built BESS in San Diego that caught fire and burned at an Escondido BESS Energy storage unit on 9/5 last week. Once again one will have to wait up to maybe 18 months for a thorough investigation of this fire to determine the events and time line of the failure and fire. What I would find interesting on this event, what was the chemistry of the battery cells used that apparently failed into thermal runaway. Who manufactured these cells? LGES got caught in 2019, then gigged again in 2020 and 2021 when GM had their burning Bolt Syndrome. Is this a long term consequence in former LG Chem. manufacturing plants that were found to have defects in manufacturing that have been “corrected”, but what about hundreds of thousands to millions of cells manufactured by LG Chem before the problem raised its ugly head? How does one determine how many cells (could have been affected)? I’m thinking this is going to be a multi-year trial by fire proposition, until defective cells are all gone.
For me this is a ‘tell’ that perhaps the Electric Utility industry should, (pick their battles and ESS facility sites carefully and use something that is not as compact per MWh of energy storage like redox flow batteries perhaps LAES like MAN Energy Solutions or metal/air ESS units like those being promoted by company Form Energy or nickle hydrogen battery company EnerVenue. Just sayin’, find and construct something that doesn’t have a tendency to thermally run away and BURN.