Even as domestic storage manufacturing begins scaling up, the real bottleneck to building out a robust battery supply chain might not be policy, domestic content requirements or access capital. It’s the workforce.
“It’s easy to announce plans but being primed and ready to build a full-scale factory in the U.S. is a different story,” Cameron Dales, the president and CCO of Denver-based battery manufacturer Peak Energy, told pv magazine USA. He explained that bringing large-scale battery projects from the drawing board to operational reality requires experienced teams who know how to manage complex processes, maintain quality and keep projects on schedule.
“Accessing that talent will be limited, and that’s going to be the deciding factor around which projects succeed,” Dales added, noting that building a team with deep industry experience was a priority for Peak from day one.
While Peak isn’t yet three years old, the four members of the sodium-ion battery start-up’s C-Suite have 60+ years of energy/tech experience between the four of them, as well as experience building gigafactories abroad.
Their decades in the industry pushed Peak toward what Dales called “customer-driven development.” Rather than starting with an innovation fresh from the lab bench and seeking out a market, he explained, it’s critical to evaluate what problems already exist for your future customers and choose a technology that can meet those needs.
“It’s relatively common in the energy storage industry for companies to start with a technology that’s come out of a lab,” Dales said, adding that while companies often think that it’s the best approach to commercialization and profitability, that’s not always the case. Peak opted for the opposite approach, choosing to pursue grid-scale sodium-ion batteries.
“We wanted to understand storage dynamics, identify the ideal technical fit and start with an existing technology that could be deployed immediately while still planning for next-generation improvements,” he added.
If Peak represents the gigafactory operating pedigree, Seattle-based Emerald Battery Labs is bringing the materials and prototyping expertise needed to strengthen sodium-ion’s foothold in the U.S. energy landscape.
The early-stage startup, which is led by a trio of battery industry veterans from Group14 Technologies and Form Energy, is focusing on building cost-effective, safe, and quick-to-market sodium-ion batteries.
Like Peak, Emerald’s execution-first strategy emphasizes scalability and safety, and prioritizes rapid prototyping with off-the-shelf materials and building partnerships with established labs.
David Bell, the company’s co-founder and CPO told pv magazine USA that their two-pronged approach coupling rapid commercialization with long-term alloying solutions balances short-term deployment speed with performance enhancements down the road.
Both companies stress that neither policy incentives nor innovative chemistries can replace experienced teams.
“Having a team that’s experienced in the industry and has those long-term relationships is critical,” added Dales.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.