U.S. entrepreneurs have led the world in creating new technologies for storing grid power, but they largely rely on other countries for their core ingredients.
Tesla’s famous car and grid batteries use cells from Japanese manufacturer Panasonic. When companies like Fluence or NextEra integrate large battery enclosures, they source cells from the likes of South Korea’s LG Chem or Samsung SDI.
And when a global supply crunch constrained those top-tier suppliers, integrators turned to a growing roster of Chinese producers and found that they measured up.
But the Trump administration’s Department of Energy last week proposed a different vision, one in which the U.S. establishes a domestic supply chain for energy storage by 2030. It’s calling this a “Grand Challenge” — and promising millions of dollars and considerable institutional resources to achieve it.
Increased funding for basic research, technology transfer and workforce training has been on the storage industry’s wishlist for years. An explicit focus on the industrial planning needed to onshore the storage supply chain, however, adds a new flavor to the mix.
Specifically, the DOE wants “a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain that is independent of foreign sources of critical materials” by 2030, which would require a marked departure from today’s import-dependent industry.
Global trade enables countries to obtain things they don’t produce locally, or which can be produced more cheaply elsewhere, something that has traditionally been deemed beneficial. But reliance on foreign supply can cause problems.
A generous storage deployment subsidy in South Korea contributed to a global battery supply crunch in 2018, squeezing projects in the U.S. Sometimes domestic decisions make it hard to rely on other countries, as when the Trump administration chose to levy tariffs against batteries and inverters produced in China, driving up prices for American companies.
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