Foxconn division to make batteries for California's Primus Power
California flow battery maker Primus Power has entered into a manufacturing services agreement with Foxsemicon, a subsidiary of Chinese company Foxconn, to assemble and test its EnergyPod batteries in China. The aim is to accelerate customer shipments into the country, where the energy market is set to take off, while Primus Power said Foxsemicon's "engineering capability, global purchasing power and in-house fabrication, assembly and testing" would help reduce manufacturing costs.

One among a small handful of redox flow-based energy storage system providers crossing the line from pilot phase into commercial deployment that includes the likes of VIZn, Redflow and RedT, Primus Power released its latest range of storage systems, EnergyPod 2, in February this year. The devices use zinc bromide battery chemistry generally targeting energy storage duration of around five hours.

The company received a US$32 million funding boost in March when it garnered investment from groups including Matador Capital from Saudi Arabia. That cash injection made Primus the chief recipient of venture capital funding in energy storage in the first quarter of this year, according to VC funding and M&A reports from Mercom Capital.

In a recent interview with Energy-Storage.News, Nancy Pfund of social impact investing firm DBL Partners also pointed out that one of Primus Power’s energy storage systems has been installed on a pilot basis at Microsoft’s HQ. Pfund said it demonstrated the commercial potential of the technology.

Pfund, who was one of the earliest VC investors in Tesla before it floated on the stock exchange called that project “very significant in terms of signalling that part of the toolkit for corporations to reduce costs by going renewable and achieve their sustainability goals – a big part of that toolkit – is the battery or the storage architecture”.

Chinese market proximity