TAYLOR, Texas (KXAN) — A one-of-a-kind facility is coming to the Central Texas area, and it is bringing hundreds of new jobs with it. A new electric vehicle battery re-purposing facility will set up shop in the city of Taylor.
The U.S. Department of Energy funded more than a dozen projects across the country to accelerate clean energy manufacturing. One of those projects included a company coming to Taylor called Moment Energy Inc.
The company received $20.3 million to start the first UL1974 Certified manufacturing facility in the country. Moment Energy CEO Edward Chiang said they disassemble electric vehicle batteries and safely test them to make sure they can be repurposed for stationary energy storage.
“We typically focus on commercial industrial industries like hospitals, airports or EV charging,” Chiang said. “All the way to manufacturing buildings, commercial towers, wherever they draw too much power from the grid, and what we call that is peak demand charges.”
Chiang said their goal is to produce up to two gigawatt hours a year in energy storage, which is equivalent to the output of a larger power plant.
The Department of Energy pointed out just one gigawatt can power 100 million LED light bulbs.
Bringing jobs
Chiang said in addition to construction jobs, it’ll bring 200 new positions within the facility. Seventy-five percent will be local technicians for manufacturing. Chiang said the remaining jobs would be engineers, business developers and operators for the supply chain.
“There’s just amazing talent around Taylor, as well as the Greater-Austin area.”
Edward Chiang, Moment Energy CEO
The company looked at what places sell and buy the most electric vehicles across the country. Chiang said California and Texas took the top two spots.
“There’s a very high chance that all the batteries will end up back at the dealerships there,” Chiang said.
They repurpose batteries that have been in use for 10 to 15 years, and can no longer serve an electric vehicle.
Now with the funding in place, Chiang said it is full steam ahead. The goal is to start operations by 2026.
“We’d love to work with the local community to essentially develop stronger battery manufacturing capabilities within the Greater-Austin and the Taylor, Texas area,” Chiang said.
