Duke Energy Agrees to Stop Using Chinese Batteries … by 2027

Batteries are used to store energy produced by photocells for when the sun isn’t shining. DoD base Camp Lejeune used Duke to install a battery energy storage system or BESS made by Japanese company Toshiba, but the batteries in the system are Chinese and send data back to China, Researchers have also shown that they could control these batteries to cause a massive system failure.

Duke said that “we have engaged in positive discussions and reached agreement for the Navy regarding the path forward”. Whatever that means.

“By 2027, we are voluntarily moving away from specifying [Chinese made] CATL battery energy storage technologies.” I don’t think that means that are going to replace all of the Chinese batteries already installed. Not to mention is that 2027, depending when in 2027, is two years away.

In the short term it looks like they have disconnected the batteries from Lejeune’s network. But not removed the batteries.

In another bit of doublespeak, the Navy says the Pentagon conducted an internal review of its facilities and “did not find any instance whereby a CATL battery is owned or operated on a [Defense Department] installation”. Huh?

At the same time Duke is saying that CATL employees will not have access to Lejeune and the company’s batteries would not have any physical or electronic data connections. Which if you believe the Pentagon, makes sense because there are no CATL batteries there. I suspect the devil is in the words the Pentagon used.

If you believe DoD there are no CATL batteries there and if you believe Duke, there are, but CATL employees won’t have access to the base.

I am not sure what the reality is.

The challenge is that the majority of lithium batteries are made in China because that is where the Lithium is. And where the cobalt is. One alternative would be to buy the raw batteries from China and add US made electronics after shipping the batteries here, but that would still mean that the supply chain is totally dependent on China. And, the US makes almost no commodity chips here, so the chips likely still come from Asia.

I think this is one of those cases where they know what the problem is, but they don’t have a good solution. If the cost of US made, utility grade batteries is, say, double that of Chinese made ones, will the government be willing to spend more of our tax dollars. Credit: Military.com

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