Russia’s state atomic corporation Rosatom announced on September 15, RENERA, a subsidiary of its TVEL Fuel Company, and the Kaliningrad Region government have signed an agreement on accomplishment of an investment project, aimed at building of a plant for production of lithium-ion cells and energy storage systems in Russia’s Western exclave region.
According to Rosatom, Enertech International Inc., a South Korean manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries and RENERA’s 49% subsidiary since 2021, will be the technological partner of the project. Its expertise and developments will enable manufacturing of products meeting high international standards. The plant for the production of lithium-ion cells and energy storage systems, the so called “Russian gigafactory”, will be launched at the Baltic NPP site already in 2026. Construction of the manufacturing facility will contribute to development of this industrial site. The full production capacity of the plant will be at least 3 GWh annually, which is the total energy volume of the produced batteries, Rosatom said.
“Building a large-scale facility for production of energy storage units is an important milestone for accomplishment of our strategy aimed at development of new non-nuclear businesses, but also for fulfillment of the Government’s electric transport development Concept with an outlook till 2030,” TVEL Fuel Company President Natalia Nikipelova said, adding that the plant’s production is supposed to be consumed mainly by domestic car manufacturers, therefore the enterprise will make a significant contribution to implementation of the state policy of import substitution.
RENERA Director General Emin Askerov said the signals his company receives from the Russian market indicate that the production volumes we planned a year ago may be insufficient. “To fulfill the current plans for electric transport development, we are considering a possible growth of the plant’s production capacity up to 12 GWh,” he said.
Kaliningrad Region Governor Anton Alikhanov noted that implementation of this project can drive the socio-economic development of remote areas of his region. “The preliminary need for personnel at the new plant is estimated at two thousand people, which means the prospect of an essential increase in the population of our eastern municipalities, housing construction and new infrastructure,” the governor said.
Energy storage is an end-to-end technology in Rosatom’s portfolio of new businesses, which makes it possible to create high-tech products which are in demand in the new technological paradigm in compliance with the energy transition concept, Risatom said, adding that Russian-made lithium-ion batteries should be used, in particular, in electric vehicles, power grids, uninterruptible power supply systems and energy consumption balancing systems.
