FREYR Leads Wave of New Battery Manufacturing

Growth in the energy storage market, including the transportation sector, is spurring an increase in global battery manufacturing and investment in new technologies.

The passage of the Inflation Relief Act (IRA) in the United States has resulted in a flood of announcements from foreign companies eager to build manufacturing plants in the United States. The Norwegian-based company, FREYR, announced late last year that it had purchased land for its Giga America battery plant in Coweta County, Georgia. The company said at the time that the project would have an initial capital investment of $1.7 billion and would create about 720 jobs in the area.

South Korea-based LG Energy Solution announced on March 24 that it would quadruple the initial budget for a battery manufacturing plant in Queen Creek, Arizona, saying the company will spend $5.5 billion on the project. LG said the Arizona site has two major facilities, one to manufacture cylindrical batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) and another to manufacture lithium iron phosphate pouches for energy storage systems. It’s for making batteries. LG also recently announced that construction is underway on a joint battery manufacturing project with Honda in Ohio.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently said it expects U.S. battery production to grow 20-fold by 2030 compared to 2021 levels. “A planned wave of new electric vehicle battery plants will increase battery manufacturing capacity in North America from 55 gigawatt hours per year in 2021 to nearly 1,000 gigawatt hours per year by 2030,” the agency said. increase. DOE said in a news release: Most of the planned projects in the US are concentrated along the north-south belt from Michigan to Alabama. Based on current plans, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Michigan will have the highest battery manufacturing capacity. ”

Meanwhile, South Korea’s Samsung SDI has announced plans for several U.S. projects, including a $2.5 billion facility in Indiana in partnership with multinational auto-manufacturing group Stellantis.

FREYR’s Georgia plant could serve as a model not only for the company, but for other battery manufacturing facilities in the United States. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Tom Jensen, said the Georgia location “underlines FREYR’s ambition to develop a very strong short-term business presence in the United States. A fundamental aspect of FREYR’s long-term strategy since its inception, and with the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, U.S. demand for ESS, passenger EVs, and other electric mobility applications is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. Ten years.”

FREYR supports its expansion plans by opening a Customer Qualified Factory (CQP) in Norway. The facility in Mo i Rana, northern Norway, went online on March 28. CQP is powered by hydroelectric power as part of a long-term contract with Statkraft from the company’s Rana hydroelectric facility.

The factory has a demo production line built at the actual physical size of a regular production line in commercial operation. This enables the creation of sample sales for customers and provides the ability to test different materials during the manufacturing process.

This building also serves as a training facility for FREYR. This allows the company’s workers to be aware of the challenges that can be part of the company’s planned commercial Giga plant operations, such as the one in Georgia.

“The opening of Chapter 1 at CQP is a significant milestone for FREYR, initiating the global launch of one industrial-scale production line of our GWh-scale 24M Technologies SemiSolid production platform.” At our investor-focused event, we will demonstrate the automated production of clean, next-generation batteries using this breakthrough technology.”

FREYR also announced the potential development of industrial-scale battery cell production in Vaasa, Finland, and in the United States.The company aims to achieve a battery cell capacity of 50 GWh by 2025 and an annual capacity of 100 GWh by 2028. , and said it plans to install 200 GWh of battery cells.annual production capacity by 2030.

The company also announced Tuesday that it has entered into discussions on a potential strategic alliance with Glencore Plc, Caterpillar, Siemens AG and Nidec Corp.

Jensen said: “This announcement represents an important first step for FREYR and four potential global partners in launching this commercial initiative. Accelerating the energy transition across key sectors by scaling up clean battery production from our Gigafactory, and incubating and developing innovative technological solutions together.”

Jensen answered the following questions as part of today’s company celebration of the CQP launch. Power About the facility and the company’s plans to expand battery production and provide innovative technologies to the energy storage and e-mobility sectors.

POWER: What is behind the decision to open a hydro-powered manufacturing facility? What are the characteristics of this CQP?

Jensen: FREYR Battery aims to reduce global emissions by providing industrial scale clean battery solutions. Our mission is to produce eco-friendly battery cells to accelerate the decarbonization of energy and transportation systems globally. One of the reasons for choosing Mo i Rana in northern Norway is the availability of abundant, low-cost renewable energy. In May 2022, with Statkraft, Europe’s largest renewable energy producer, [a] Supply of renewable electricity under globally competitive terms for our operations in Mo i Rana.

As the world’s first SemiSolid technology platform, we made an early decision to build CQP as a complete GWh-scale industrial-scale production line. Our goal is to have 8 of these installed at Giga Arctic in Mo i Rana and replicate this across the Atlantic to Giga America. By implementing a real industrial-scale production line at CQP, subsequent gigafactories can reduce the time to reach target yield and uptime.

POWER: How is your technology different from other battery manufacturers?

Jensen: We have selected the US Technology Licensing Partner of 24M Technologies Inc., a spin-off from MIT. The start of operations at CQP launches his one industrial-scale production line of GWh-scale 24M SemiSolid production platforms globally. The battery cell design itself is improved by providing significantly larger and thicker electrodes. This means less repeating layers in the cell, which means more energy-carrying material per battery cell and lower material cost per KWh. Larger physical structures also result in significant system level cost savings as fewer modules, packs and battery management system related costs are required at the end product/system level.

The production process has also been dramatically simplified and radically improved. We estimate that the technology will significantly reduce capital expenditures, energy consumption and space savings, allowing us to produce up to 3x more batteries per employee at GWh scale.

Power: How does the Georgia manufacturing plant support your position among the world’s battery makers?

Jensen: FREYR is CQP and [the] IRAs. We are evaluating multiple options to expedite the start of production at Giga America, with a target launch date of 2025. We are exploring different roadmaps to accelerate time-to-market, offer competitive products, and gain IRA benefits and a growing ESS. [energy storage system] chance. Our customers appreciate our ability to deliver products from multiple regions. The US is also the fastest growing her ESS market in the world and this is a market segment we are focusing on.

POWER: Tell us more about the engineering behind the 24M technology.

Jensen: The SemiSolid platform greatly simplifies the manufacturing process, cutting the number of manufacturing process steps in half. In short, this technique produces larger, thicker electrodes. This means making final battery products that are more compatible with those currently used in vehicles, energy storage containers, etc. The fundamental change in this technology is that electrolytes are used as binders and solvents in the early stages of the production process, eliminating the need for expensive and space-consuming solvent recovery and drying process steps.

Power: How can we reduce production costs while increasing energy density per volume unit?

Jensen: 24M’s SemiSolid production platform produces fit-for-purpose products where batteries are used today, offering superior cost and performance when produced at GWh scale. We expect to significantly reduce capital expenditures per GWh spent, reduce energy consumption, increase automation and digitization, and triple productivity per employee. At the final product level, we also see that physically large products can significantly reduce the total cost by reducing the number of repeating structures at the system level.

Power: Does your group face supply chain issues? If so, why and if not, how can they be avoided?

Jensen: Our general strategy is to build a network of global suppliers, but we also target local decarbonized supply chains. We want to minimize our logistics chain to be as cost- and carbon-efficient as possible, but at the same time we want to remain globally flexible and resilient. This means that most of the raw materials needed in Europe will come from Europe, and in the case of the US from North America, but of course there will also be cross-continental supplies, including Asia. So far, we have been able to secure all the raw materials we need and most of the underlying raw material cost volatility is covered through the offtake contract pass-through mechanism.

POWER: What are the biggest issues for the global battery manufacturing market today?

Jensen: FREYR is moving as fast as it can to decarbonize energy and transport systems globally. This is a growing industry as demand is growing rapidly, and it takes more of everything to be able to produce all the batteries we need. To meet demand, the world will need to install seven times as much battery capacity as he does over the next seven years if it is to stay within reasonable climatic boundaries. A key challenge facing the battery industry is to be able to scale up quickly. This requires enormous capital and capabilities in record-breaking time to ensure quality products with impeccable safety and sustainability standards.

—Darrell Proctor Senior Associate Editor at POWER (@power magazine).