Group14 projects production delayed
Opening of the Group14 facility in Moses Lake has been pushed back, but construction is continuing, according to company officials.
FILE PHOTO
Rick Lubbe, Group14 co-founder and chief executive officer, gives a tour of the facility to U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, center, and U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in February 2024. The company announced last September that it had received approval for up to $200 million in federal grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand operations in Moses Lake.
MOSES LAKE — Production at the Group14 facility in Moses Lake is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2025. Company officials originally hoped to start production in late 2024.
Katie Rolnick, Group14 senior communications manager, said the facility, known as BAM-2, is still under construction.
“Our work at BAM-2 is still ongoing,” she wrote in response to an email from the Columbia Basin Herald. “We are in negotiations to restructure some of the construction contracts.”
The company broke ground on the Moses Lake facility in April 2023. Group14 produces silicon battery components that company officials say can be used in batteries that last longer and are easier to charge.
Rolnick said production is still the goal.
“We are going as fast as possible to meet the demand of our customers who want our silicon battery material,” she said.
Two sections of the facility, known as modules, will be the first completed. It’s designed so that each section can begin operation while others are under construction.
“We expect to be in full production in Q2 after completing final construction and commissioning activities through Q1,” Rolnick said.
Grant Ray, vice president for global market strategy for Group14, said in an earlier interview that each module at the Wheeler Road facility will produce about 2,000 tons of silicon material per year.
The company is based in Woodinville, and its facility there has been producing silicon-based battery components since 2021.
Ray said producing silicon components has been a challenge since silicon works well for a while but then breaks down. Group14 engineers and owners think they’ve solved that problem and also think they’ve solved a third problem, making a product that can be used by existing manufacturers.
The process requires silane gas, and Group14 received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in September 2024 to build a facility in Moses Lake to manufacture the gas.
“Manufacturing large commercial volumes of silicon-based battery materials in the U.S. required equivalently large-scale commercial access to silane gas,” according to a Group14 press release announcing the grant. “This project is intended to install, commission and operate a U.S.-based silane manufacturing plant with an annual capacity of 7,200 metric tons.”
Group14 was partnering with REC Silicon; silane gas was one of the products from the REC facility on Wheeler Road. REC shut down production in Moses Lake in 2019 but announced in 2022 that the facility would reopen.
It was still ramping up production when REC officials announced in late December 2024 that it would stop polysilicon production immediately, although the section that produced silicon gases would be maintained and could be reopened.
Rick Lubbe, Group14 co-founder and chief executive officer, gives a tour of the facility to U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, center, and U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in February 2024. The company announced last September that it had received approval for up to $200 million in federal grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand operations in Moses Lake.