GE gets OK for battery plant

PHOTOGRAPHER: Michael Lamendola

General Electric in early August will begin converting Building 66 on its Schenectady campus into a $100-million battery manufacturing plant, now that the state has given a green light to the project, a company spokeswoman said Friday.

“We are excited to have completed this significant milestone in the construction of the battery plant,” said spokeswoman Chris Horne. “Our timelines and plans remain the same.”

The state Department of Environmental Conservation today is issuing a permit for the battery plant, determining the state-of-the art facility meets environmental requirements, said Regional Director Gene Kelly. “This is a key permit. It allows them to proceed with rehabilitating Building 66,” he said. GE used Building 66 to manufacture steam turbines.

The battery plant will take up to three years to complete, with the company performing the work in phases. Construction will create approximately 150 jobs. Most of the construction will be inside Building 66, but GE expects to put a new facade on the building.

The battery plant will employ 350 people when at full capacity and will produce 1 million battery cells per year by 2012 and up to 10 million cells per year in 2015. GE is calling the battery cell the Durathon.

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Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton said the announcement “is great news. We have anxiously awaited the start of this project.” He said GE’s decision to build a manufacturing plant in Schenectady “marks the return of GE in a very new and significant industry in terms of green manufacturing. We are a leader in renewable energy.”

GE recently spent $39 million of its own money and $5 million from the state to create an operations center and headquarters for its renewable energy business in Building 53, a former gas turbine manufacturing facility, on the Schenectady campus. The facility employs 650 people — engineers, technicians and support personnel.

Stratton said he expects the creation of 350 jobs to be just the start for the battery plant. “The 350 is a little on the low side, I hear,” he said.

Susan Savage, chairwoman of the Schenectady County Legislature, said GE could have built the battery plant anywhere in the world, but chose Schenectady because state, local and GE officials work cooperatively.

“We worked very hard on this project for the past two years. It is one of the few [new] manufacturing sites in New York state, and there just aren’t new manufacturing jobs in the Northeast,” she said.

The DEC issued a negative declaration under the State Environmental Quality Review Act for the battery plant, which means the company did not have to prepare an environmental impact statement and that the project did not have to undergo a lengthy review process, Kelly said. A lengthy review process would have delayed work by months, pushing the project into next year.

In reviewing the GE project, the state determined the battery plant will minimally affect air quality, surface water and groundwater in the area. Traffic into and out of the GE campus is expected to increase by 118 vehicles, to 426 vehicles per day. The DEC has determined the surrounding road network can handle the capacity, as it once handled traffic involving 28,000 employees when the plant operated at capacity in its heyday. The GE Schenectady plant now employs 4,000 people.

The Durathon battery is intended to provide reliable backup power to telecommunication systems in remote locations, to those connected to unstable power grids or to those who use renewable energy sources, according to the company. GE also said the battery’s compact features will allow cell towers to become more “plentiful, compact and elegant.” The battery is also expected to be used in GE’s hybrid locomotives.

The battery plant is near GE Global Research in Niskayuna, where researchers continue to enhance the battery’s chemistry and related system technologies, according to the company.

The battery uses a sodium halide chemistry that allows it to last up to 10 times longer than traditional backup storage systems. GE said the battery requires no maintenance, produces no toxic chemicals and is fully recyclable. It also can operate in any temperature or climate.

The power cells will have the capability of generating 900 megawatt-hours of energy per year — the equivalent of the battery power required for 45,000 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with an 80-mile range, according to GE.

GE officials said the market for the batteries could reach $500 million in sales by 2015 and $1 billion shortly thereafter. The batteries, which are a critical piece of energy storage systems, will rely heavily on new materials, new manufacturing technologies and intelligent controls.