Kore Power acquires storage developer

The U.S. battery cell developer Kore Power has acquired Vermont-based storage developer Northern Reliability.

Why it matters: The U.S. is among the world's top battery producers, with 59 GWh of commissioned production capacity in 2020 vs. China's 568 GWh, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

• This combination gives Kore an integrated manufacturing capability that the company says is unique in the U.S.

The details: Kore Solutions will be a new division within Kore Power, serving as a "full-service storage integrator."

Of note: Kore Power last summer announced plans to build a 1 million square foot manufacturing facility in Arizona, with 12 gigawatt hours (GWh) of production capacity.

• Groundbreaking is set for "the coming months," the company said.

Go deeper: Kore Power is among U.S. energy and climate tech manufacturers that have pushed for policies that would boost domestic manufacturing.

• "We need to support battery manufacturing the same way we support other critical industries, which is every year," Kore Power's vice president for government relations, Jason Knapp, told Politico last spring.
• "If you’re shipping product from China, there’s tariffs on that product," Bellows tells Axios. "It’s all about supply chain. Kore does a really wonderful job of getting their supply chain and enhancing those relationships."

What they're saying: "It’s very difficult to get product right now, and partnering with a company as good as Kore … made a lot of sense for us to just make this move together" Northern Reliability president Jay Bellows, who will become president of newly formed Kore Solutions, tells Axios.

• "They’re going to expand those relationships so that we can take advantage of markets as best we can. Diversification is a huge piece of it."