Beshear: Shelbyville battery manufacturing plant to bring more than 1,500 jobs to Kentucky
Shelbyville will be the site of a new battery manufacturing plant expected to bring nearly 1,600 jobs to the region, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Friday.
A subsidiary of Canadian Solar, construction of Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing will cost approximately $712 million to build.
“This project isn’t just big, it’s historic,” the governor said Friday in Frankfort.
The “innovative, state-of-the-art industrial battery production facility” will create 1,572 jobs and be the largest employer in Shelby County, he said.
It’s the largest economic project in Shelby County’s history, and the third-largest jobs announcement Beshear has made during his tenure as Kentucky governor.
The other two were Envision AESC, the $2 billion gigafactory Japanese electric vehicle battery technology park in Bowling Green, which Beshear said in 2022 would bring 2,000 jobs once completed. And Ford Motor Co. and SK On’s two electric battery plants in Hardin County, a 5,000-job, $5.8 billion project Beshear announced in 2021 that will produce batteries for Ford and Lincoln electric vehicles.
Production will begin by the end of 2025 on the 1-million-square-foot Shelbyville facility, which will produce lithium ion cell batteries.
The initial production capacity will be enough batteries to store three gigawatt hours-worth of energy, with an “expected expansion” to six gigawatt hours, said Colin Parkin, president of e-Storage, a Candian-based company. The six gigawatt-hour battery cell, module and packaging manufacturing facility will produce “self-contained energy storage systems . . . packaged into into modular, containerized utility-scale batteries,” the governor said.
Dr. Shawn Qu, founder and CEO of Canadian Solar, said Friday, “energy storage is a crucial part of the new and evolving electricity grid.
“Battery cells are the heart of an energy utility storage system,” he said. “This project will put Kentucky at the center of the effort to build a robust and secure electricity grid for this country.”
Shelbyville Mayor H. Troy Ethington praised the announcement, saying, “Shelbyville continues to grow as a hub for innovation, and we’re proud to support industries that prioritize sustainability and technological advancement.”
The governor on Friday again touted Kentucky as the nation’s largest producer of electric vehicle batteries, but with Friday’s announcement, Beshear said, “now, we’re going to lead in the industrial electrification space.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2024 at 10:10 AM.
