Energy storage firm adding 200+ jobs in $251M Concord expansion
CONCORD, N.C. — Alevo Group S.A., a Swiss-based energy storage company, will add more than 200 jobs to its manufacturing facility in Cabarrus County, according to a release from the N.C. Department of Commerce.
The company is expanding its Concord facility with the help of a $2.6 million Job Development Investment Grant, or JDIG as it’s commonly known, approved by the Economic Investment Committee last week The expansion will cost Alevo $251 million, the company said in the press release.
The Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners and Concord City Council also provided Alevo two five-year, performance-based tax incentives totaling more than $10.55 million.
The Concord site is Alevo’s only facility in the United States where the rechargeable GridBank lithium-ion battery storage system is made. It now employs 215 full-time employees, and new positions will include engineers, manufacturing jobs and employees to handle maintenance, logistics and supply chain management, among other roles.
AlevoCompensation for the new positions will average around $56,327 per year, compared to Cabarrus County’s overall average wage at $37,808 per year, the release said.
This expansion comes as energy storage on the grid has become increasingly popular in Europe. U.S. companies have recently begun to confront the challenging balance between cost effectiveness and increasing demand.
“It’s exciting that a global company like Alevo chooses to manufacture its cutting-edge energy storage products right here in North Carolina, in the heart of one of our state’s strongest manufacturing regions,” Gov. Roy Cooper said. “We need to continue to recruit and train for 21st century jobs like these.”
GridBank is a 3.5 million-square-foot power factory for storing energy, often renewable energy, within powerful batteries, according to the company website. These large factories are also known as gigafactories.
One of the nation’s largest players today in the business of energy storage by way of batteries is Tesla Inc., maker of self-driving, rechargeable cars and whose CEO, Elon Musk, also makes rockets and spacecrafts via his SpaceX Technologies Corporation. Tesla began building its Gigafactory in mid 2014, which will be able to store just under twice the energy of Alevo’s batteries.
