Peak Energy Selects Sacramento for Sodium-Ion Plant

Peak Energy has selected Sacramento, California, for what the company describes as America’s first manufacturing facility dedicated to grid-scale sodium-ion energy storage systems. The 183,000-square-foot plant in Sacramento’s Metro Air Park is designed to produce up to 4 GWh of storage systems annually, capacity Peak says could support nearly four million homes a year once fully ramped. Shipments are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027.

The project represents up to $71 million in capital investment and is projected to create 239 local jobs over 18 months, with average annual wages above $90,000. The company says it has already secured more than 6 GWh in customer commitments ahead of production, including agreements with independent power producers Jupiter Power, Energy Vault and RWE Americas. California’s Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development backed the project with a $10.5 million California Competes Tax Credit awarded in May, drawn from a program that made more than $920 million available to businesses expanding in the state this fiscal year.

GM Partnership Splits Cell Development From System Manufacturing

Peak’s pitch rests partly on a passively cooled architecture designed to eliminate the active cooling equipment used in conventional lithium-ion storage systems, while sodium-ion chemistry reduces the company’s reliance on lithium. Peak deployed its first grid-scale sodium-ion storage system in 2025 and has since expanded its commercial partnerships. Its June 9 agreement with General Motors pairs Peak’s storage platform with next-generation sodium-ion cells being developed at GM’s Michigan battery labs. GM retains exclusive manufacturing rights to those cells. Peak will integrate them into its own energy storage systems, a split that divides the domestic supply chain between cell development and system manufacturing.

Peak’s expansion follows a difficult year for U.S. sodium-ion manufacturing. Natron Energy, once the sector’s most visible domestic player, shut down its Holland, Michigan plant and Santa Clara headquarters in September 2025 after its board said it could not raise sufficient capital, canceling a planned $1.4 billion gigafactory in North Carolina. That plant never broke ground. The collapse underscored the commercialization challenge facing the sector rather than any flaw in the chemistry itself, and it leaves Peak’s build-out as one of the clearer tests of whether a domestic sodium-ion manufacturer can reach commercial scale.

The timing tracks a broader shift in how utilities and data center operators source storage. The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers could host 20 to 25 GW of battery storage globally by 2030 as AI operators look for tools to manage volatile power draws, a trend already drawing new attention to long-duration storage technologies. Peak’s build also adds to a broader effort to build out a domestic battery supply chain across extraction, processing and manufacturing. Peak says its passive cooling design cuts storage costs by 20% relative to conventional systems and targets 99% uptime, and the company estimates, based on its own cost assumptions, that eliminating battery refrigeration in California alone could save ratepayers roughly $100 million a year as more of that architecture reaches the grid.