A former cigarette manufacturing facility has become home to a major grid battery production venture.
Alevo purchased the massive former Philip Morris cigarette manufacturing facility in Concord, North Carolina, for USD $68.5 million and renamed it to Victory Industrial Park (VIP).
Alevo says manufacturing should commence at VIP next year and the facility will produce 40 of its “GridBanks” per month by July 2015. The company aims to have produced 480 GridBanks in the first year of production.
The new facility will create 2,500 jobs initially, with potential for the creation of up to 6,000 jobs as operations grow.
The GridBank is a shipping container loaded with banks of Alevo batteries that can deliver 1 megawatt hour of power.
In addition to storing and delivering electricity at a utility-scale, the GridBank balances transmission so voltage and frequency are constant. Smoothing the variable generation output of clean sources such as solar power systems and wind energy, Alevo GridBanks can increase the integration of renewables. Fossil fuel based power generation facilities will be able to operate more efficiently, reducing pollution and cost
Alevo’s batteries are based on LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) and graphite. Non-flammable and non-volatile, the company says the batteries can be charged and discharged with no resting period over 40,000 times and are the only lithium based batteries with 100% depth-of-discharge (DOD) capabilities.
More than $1 billion has been poured into Alevo through private investments and equity funds. The company has announced China-ZK International Energy Investment Co, Ltd will promote and commercialize Alevo’s technology products and services in China. It has also signed a joint venture agreement with TSG and Turkish infrastructure service provider RBM for the purchase, sale and leasing of its products to state-owned and private companies in Turkey.
Founded in 2009, Alevo Group is headquartered in Martigny Switzerland.
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