GFO-24-304 – California Battery Pilot Manufacturing Line

Purpose

The purpose of this solicitation is to fund the establishment of a battery pilot manufacturing line capable of manufacturing and testing a variety of emerging lithium-ion based technologies.

Description

The purpose of this solicitation is to fund the establishment of a battery pilot manufacturing line capable of manufacturing and testing a variety of emerging lithium-ion based technologies. This solicitation supports the approved Electric Program Investment Charge 2021–2025 (EPIC 4) Investment Plan’s strategic objective to enable successful clean energy entrepreneurship across California. This solicitation’s research topics fall under the EPIC 4 Scaling Clean Energy Technology Initiative. Lithium-ion batteries are a critical component of the clean energy transition – supporting transportation electrification, renewables integration, and load management. California is expected to need 52 GW of storage by 2045 to support a 100-percent clean energy grid, and lithium-ion batteries are expected to play a large role in meeting this need. Additionally, California currently has more than 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) registered and expects more than 15 million EVs on the road by 2035; these vehicles will largely be powered by lithium-ion batteries. Alongside this growing demand for lithium-ion batteries, there exists room for improvement and continued evolution of the technology. California has seen significant growth in the development of innovative battery technologies addressing critical areas such as safety, cost, performance, supply chain security, and end-of-life management. While these innovations show great promise in improving the overall value proposition of lithium-ion batteries, scaling their deployment and incorporation into end-use applications, particularly domestically, has been challenging. Battery innovations often take place at the component level (i.e., anode, cathode, electrolyte, or separator). However, customers, such as large battery manufacturers or EV manufacturers, seek fully formed battery cells. This disconnect creates a challenge for companies developing battery innovations: they must either invest in internal manufacturing capacity – which is capital and time-intensive – or seek out limited capacity third-party manufacturing services, which are currently scarce in California. As a result, inefficient investments are undertaken, leading to slower time to market and hindering commercialization and scaling of new battery technologies. The purpose of this solicitation is to establish a Battery Pilot Manufacturing Line that will provide full-service battery cell fabrication and testing services for battery innovators in California. This pilot line will be a shared-use facility allowing battery innovators to leverage the pilot line’s manufacturing capacity and on-site staff in order to transform their innovative components into fully-formed battery cells.​ Battery companies may provide the battery cells to potential customers for evaluation or use them to support their ongoing technology development. The goals of the pilot line are to support rapid prototyping, de-risk new battery technologies, accelerate commercialization and customer adoption of new battery technology, and provide these services in California.