Energy storage developer Fluence Energy is contracting for a new manufacturing partner in the U.S. to alleviate supply chain constraints domestically.
The plant will manufacture Fluence Cubes and be located in Utah. Production capacity at the Utah hub will start at 75 Cubes produced per week with plans to ramp up to 150 weekly.
Fluence hopes to begin shipping Cubes from the facility by September. The move will expand the company’s production beyond Asia.
“At a time when the energy storage industry has seen increased supply chain disruptions, this production hub will be particularly important in strengthening business continuity and improving flexibility for meeting customer needs,” said Fluence SVP & Chief Supply Chain and Manufacturing Officer Carol Couch. “By opening this new facility with our contract manufacturing partner, Fluence is even better positioned to support customers with the rapid deployment of storage in North America.”
Fluence also has added two spare parts hubs in Ireland and Utah. They became operational in recent months and are located near large storage markets and customer fleets.
“The markets we serve have unique use cases, customer needs, and regulatory requirements, and these new facilities are an expansion of the ongoing regionalization of our operations,” said Couch. “We look forward to utilizing this new contract manufacturing center, spare parts hubs, and testing lab to continue to better serve our customers across the globe.”
In July, the company announced a partnership with Rich Electric to deploy a 100-MW battery storage system in Taiwan. Earlier this year, Australian utility AGL selected Fluence to provide advanced grid-forming capabilities for the Broken Hill Battery Energy Storage project funded by ARENA.
Fluence also works with electric transmission companies to introduce battery-based energy storage as a transmission enhancing asset. Transmission companies are beginning to deploy storage as “virtual transmission” by placing energy storage assets along the transmission line at strategic points to inject or absorb power and mimic the transmission line flow. Jon Newman of Fluence and Kip Fox of Electric Transmission Texas will discuss this strategy and reveal how Electric Transmission Texas has incorporated energy storage into it operating strategy at T&D World Conference and Exhibition in October in Charlotte.
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Fluence was created several years ago as a joint venture between Siemens and AES. It went public in stock trading earlier this year.
The Cube is a modular, standardized battery pack which can accommodate energy storage capacity from 1 MW to more than 500-MW systems.The pack can be used in Gridstack combinations for larger energy storage systems.
Companies throughout the commercial and industrial sectors have scrambled to diversify their supply chains in recent years. The global supply chain has come under duress due to various factors, including the COVID-19 Pandemic, friction with China and Russia’s invasion and war with Ukraine.
This summer, Ford Motor Co. Model e electric vehicle division announced it was expanding its battery cell supply chain beyond current partners and would also incorporate more lithium iron phosphate chemistry. The Ford models had been somewhat reliant on nickel in its battery cell chemistries.
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(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]).
