Climate tech startup Group14 is building a factory that it says will be the world’s largest producer of advanced silicon battery material — an ingredient that makes conventional lithium ion batteries more powerful and faster charging.
The company’s factory in Moses Lake in Eastern Washington by next year should start producing Group14’s patented silicon-carbon product. When it’s fully up and running, the facility will have a record-setting 4,000 ton annual capacity — enough material for at least 200,000 electric vehicles, or 20 gigawatts of battery power.
There are dozens of companies making advanced silicon anode materials, said Group14 CEO and co-founder Rick Luebbe — but his moved faster.
Launched in 2015, the startup has raised $650 million from investors, plus more than $100 million in federal funding. Group14 was a spinoff from the energy storage materials company EnerG2, which was itself a University of Washington spinoff started in 2003.
The core technology group at Group14 was part of the EnerG2 journey that took lab research through pilot studies and into full commercialization. EnerG2 was acquired by BASF in 2016.
The experience helped shape their mindset in creating Group14’s technology. The team intentionally designed its anode material with an eye to easy manufacturing, Luebbe said.
“It’s not just about the material working well, it has to be able to scale and has to be cost effective,” he said.
Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) last week published a paper describing that difficulty with battery materials, noting that “promising discoveries in the laboratory” can face insurmountable technical challenges when it comes to manufacturing.
So Group14 kept it simple — or as simple as they could in producing an advanced energy material.
“There’s a lot of trade secrets in there and a lot of [intellectual property] around it,” Luebbe said. “But in terms of how the material is actually made, it’s not a very complex set of steps.”
The startup’s silicon-carbon product is used in lieu of a battery’s conventional graphite anode. The silicon-carbon anode is more efficient, so it can be smaller, leaving more space available for the cathode. And the cathode contains the lithium, which determines the battery’s energy density. A bigger cathode creates a more powerful battery.
That performance boost won the backing of Porsche AG, which is an investor and customer. The startup has additional customers in the automotive and consumer product sectors, Luebbe said.
Group14 currently runs a factory east of Seattle in Woodinville that can produce 120 tons of battery material per year, though it’s operating below that volume.
The company is finishing construction of a facility in South Korea in partnership with electronics company SK materials. It’s slated to start running later this year, with a 2,000 ton annual capacity. For a time, that factory will be the biggest volume production site for advanced silicon anode materials — until it’s expected to be dethroned by the Moses Lake operation in 2024.
Here’s the Moses Lake facility by the numbers:
- The site will include a 1 million-square-foot campus.
- The factory will initially have two modules, each producing 2,000 tons of material annually.
- Construction will require 400 workers.
- Engineering, design and construction firm Clayco is partnering on the project.
- The factory’s construction will include $30 million of U.S.-made steel.
- Group14 expects to hire 200 employees in Moses Lake to operate the two modules, with the potential to build more.
