LGES targets 100% non-Chinese storage components in Michigan by next year
Tristan Doherty · A former race car engineer on battery safety and supply chains [partner content] · May 20, 2025 · at 13:07
Tristan Doherty explains LG Energy Solution's progress on localizing supply chains and eliminating Chinese components from its energy storage battery production.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Right now, coming off of the Holland, Michigan line, we're on schedule for early next year to be a hundred percent non-Chinese in terms of all of the components and subcomponents that are going into those ESS cells.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Tristan Doherty
Nuclear and gas lead times make batteries the immediate grid solution
“Nukes are probably five or 10 or more years out. New gas generation. You can't get a new gas generator for probably four or six years at the very shortest. And so the most immediate and economical solution is really that those renewables and batteries.”
Doherty: Moss Landing fire spread after water suppression system failed
“What we do know is that mid-afternoon, January 16th, one of those modules went into thermal runaway. What we don't know yet is we don't have an official sort of answer on is for some reason that water system didn't work correctly. And that thermal runaway spre…”
Doherty: Battery storage failure rates dropped 97% from 2018 to 2023
“If you look at the number of failures and the failure rate from 2018 to 2023, it was just a five year span. That it dropped by 97%, and I think that's something that's really incredible and something to be really proud of.”
LG Energy Solution moved Arizona ESS production to Michigan to start faster
“Instead of taking three or four years to build a complete greenfield battery factory in Arizona, we could take six to 12 months, take an existing shell, an existing building that had all the permitting done, and had all the infrastructure and all the utilities…”
Doherty: EPA post-fire testing at Moss Landing showed safe environmental limits
“Thankfully, all the environmental measurements that came back all of the EPA has been doing extensive testing all around the site. All those measurements have come back within sort of safe limits”
Doherty: Worst-case failure in modern storage is losing a single container
“What you think about in terms of safety, you think about worst case scenarios. And now the worst case scenario is simply that you lose a container. Maybe, maybe the next container over gets a little Couple scorch marks on it, but typically right now, the worst…”