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Trina Storage: A long-term vision, a fully bankable solution and a ‘T-shaped strategy’ for the US BESS market

By Trina Storage
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“This solution is fully bankable and financeable in the States,” says Terry Chen, VP of Trina Solar North America.

“We don’t want to sell something to the customer, and then they get stuck when they want their project financed by lenders.”

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Chen is leading the vertically integrated solar PV manufacturer’s efforts in the US battery energy storage system (BESS) market through its brand Trina Storage.

Trina Solar is one of the world’s best-known solar brands, established over 27 years ago, which means it has been in business longer than the 25-year warranty period for PV modules. It gives Trina standing as the “most bankable and cost-competitive solution provider” in the global market, Chen says.

Trina Storage, meanwhile, has been on a rapid growth trajectory since it delivered its first project outside China, a 50MW turnkey BESS solution in the UK, in 2022.

It now has projects in operation, contract, or construction elsewhere in Europe, Australia, and Latin America. It has launched the second generation of its Elementa containerised BESS solution and announced earlier this year the start of commercial operations for its first projects in the US.

These were complex projects, Terry Chen says, delivered for a group of municipal utilities in Massachusetts through developer LightShift Energy. The Elementa 2 units, which Trina supplied and integrated, perform a number of demanding applications, such as black start, enabling the New England community energy providers to keep the lights on throughout challenging circumstances.

The projects also mark another important milestone for Trina Storage: they are the first outside of China to use the company’s in-house lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells.

Previously, for projects in the UK, Germany and Italy, Trina has supplied the BESS cabinets and DC block, integrating third-party cells.

Using cells produced at its own factories mitigates supply chain risks that other system integrators might face. Trina, as it stands, has more than 12GWh annual cell production capacity.

Equally, or perhaps even more importantly, the in-house cell enables Trina Storage more control over the project and how it works. This is especially useful when complicated applications are involved, Chen says.

T-shaped strategy

While vertical integration has always been a central pillar of Trina’s strategy in solar PV and now in storage, the company’s approach to the US market is, in fact, a ‘T-shaped strategy’ – a combination of vertical and horizontal integration.

Trina is a well-established manufacturer that aims to create a vertical integration strategy in the States, from battery cell to DC container. Horizontal integration means adding key customer-facing capabilities domestically, too, from sales to product engineering and long-term servicing. In other words, it means deep-rooted market expertise within the US.

“If you don’t have the expertise, you can’t call yourself a solution provider. You help the customer design the project against their financial goals from the financial modelling side, and you help the customer throughout the construction period. We have the entire team for that,” Terry Chen says.

In addition to its own staff—with plans to triple headcount in the US within the next couple of years—a full ecosystem of partners is essential, and Trina Storage has that too.

These include engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies, owners’ engineers, local component providers including balance of plant (BOP), and financiers. In other words, Trina Storage has all the stakeholders needed for a successful project or portfolio fully lined up and ready to go.

“The T-shaped strategy can help Trina to set us apart from the competition; versus the typical integrators. They don’t have their in-house technology in the product. They usually have to stack risk, by having the back-to-back arrangements.”

Chen says that while Trina respects its competitors, many of its rival Chinese manufacturers and integrators entering the US market lack the know-how and in-depth understanding of the market that Trina has developed.

Deeper understanding of the US market

While it has been successful in Europe so far, simply transferring lessons learned there to the US wouldn’t work, and Chen says Trina Storage made sure it did its homework before crossing the Atlantic.

“The electricity market is very different here [from Europe], you have basically seven electricity markets in the States, and every market is different.”

That ranges from markets such as ERCOT in Texas, which “has a lot of freedom” and is perhaps quite similar to the UK, to East Coast markets which are much more highly regulated and require a very long-term approach to realising customers’ expectations and goals.

Then, in the Southwest US states like California, Nevada and Arizona, there are a lot of solar-plus-storage projects. These tend to have fixed power purchase agreements (PPA) or other long-term contract structures, performing very standard, one-cycle-per-day applications, but they are technologically demanding in terms of energy density requirements.

Batteries at solar PV plants need to fit a set footprint, and that’s why, in addition to the regular Elementa 2, which fits 4MWh of capacity into a 20-foot standard ISO container configuration, Trina has launched its 5MWh+ Elementa 2 in the US, using 314Ah cells.

As a general rule, the US market is very Capex-sensitive too, Chen says, and this, coupled with a need for higher energy density solutions is why Trina Storage has launched Elementa 2 Elevate for the US.

Elevate is a 5MW/10MWh plug-and-play AC solution that comes fully integrated with a power conversion system (PCS) from a top-tier provider and energy management system (EMS) from a local partner.

Trinasolar’s Elementa 2 Elevate 10MWh Cell-to-AC solution. Source: Trinasolar

“That means our customers get the solution ready to go, and we want to de-risk the commissioning process onsite, and usually, we get all the integration done in our lab. That’s a very different approach from our competitors,” Chen says.

Trina Storage has a deep appreciation of the maturity of the US market, and just how educated customers are into what battery storage can do.

17 June 2025
Napa, USA
PV Tech has been running PV ModuleTech Conferences since 2017. PV ModuleTech USA, on 17-18 June 2025, will be our fourth PV ModulelTech conference dedicated to the U.S. utility scale solar sector. The event will gather the key stakeholders from solar developers, solar asset owners and investors, PV manufacturing, policy-making and and all interested downstream channels and third-party entities. The goal is simple: to map out the PV module supply channels to the U.S. out to 2026 and beyond.
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UK Solar Summit 2025 will look at the role solar currently plays in the energy mix, how this will change over the coming years and how this aligns with net-zero and other government targets. We will break down all these challenges and help build up solutions through discursive panels, motivational keynotes and case studies, with newly added interactive sessions to get you moving and meeting your peers, making the connections you need to boost your business.

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