US-based lithium-ion battery and energy storage system (BESS) manufacturing startup KORE Power has launched two new DC Block products.
The company announced last week that it is offering scalable DC Block solutions for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) BESS projects. The LFP block has a capacity of 750kWh, while the capacity of the NMC block is 1.3MWh.
The equipment is made in the US and as such expected to allow both manufacturer and customers to benefit from Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentives for domestically-made clean energy equipment. They will be kitted out with cells made by KORE Power, which is currently building a factory in Arizona set to open this year, with an annual production capacity of 6GWh.
That plant can ramp to 12GWh annual production, while KORE Power also has a factory in China with 6GWh annual production. KORE Power has received an offer of financial support to the tune of US$850 million from the US government towards its manufacturing plans, from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO).
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The KORE Power DC Blocks include purpose-built enclosures, which are proprietary to the company’s design; a battery management system (BMS); high voltage alternating current (HVAC) equipment and fire suppression systems, in addition to other safety features. While designed for DC-coupled applications, the solutions can also be used in turnkey AC-coupled projects.
The company claimed that an unspecified volume of orders have already been received “from multiple customers”.
In September 2023, KORE Power, which also has a system integration arm and a stake in mobile BESS provider Nomad, signed deal with the US division of Japan’s Nidec, through which Nidec would buy up to 2.2GWh of cells from the manufacturer. Alongside that supply deal is a technology transfer partnership, with KORE Power DC Blocks to be integrated into utility-scale and commercial and industrial (C&I) BESS with Nidec’s power conversion system (PCS) technology.
While the IRA has ushered in a huge wave of investment and interest in the US clean energy sectors, KORE Power was somewhat ahead of the curve in seeking to develop lithium battery manufacturing to the BESS industry, starting from the ground up with cell production.
In a June 2021 online roundtable event chaired by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, KORE Power CEO Lindsay Gorrill said that cells, are the “fundamental basic unit” of BESS and electric vehicle (EV) technologies and the “critical piece” into which he urged the country to encourage investment into.
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