Source: SolarEdge.

Smart energy and inverter company SolarEdge will acquire the South Korean battery manufacturer Kokam.

SolarEdge has initially taken a 75% share for US$88 million with the intention of purchasing the remaining shares in the future.

“The acquisition of Kokam will enable us to grow our offering, adding already proven battery storage to our product portfolio,” said Guy Sella, CEO, chairman and founder, SolarEdge. “Our technological innovation combined with Kokam’s world-class team and renowned battery storage solutions, will enable seamless integration with our current solutions, taking us a further step toward making solar installations smarter and more beneficial.”

Kokam produces lithium-ion batteries for a variety of applications including aerospace, electric vehicles and energy storage systems. It claims to have more than 700MWh of deployments in the field. As well as serving as system integrator to some of its battery storage projects and delivering turnkey systems, the company has a range of batteries that include high power nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) lithium batteries. In May this year Energy-Storage.news reported that the company delivered NMC batteries to a mining operation, where they will help increase the efficiency of gas turbines. While the high power batteries come at a higher capex than other grid batteries, Kokam claimed that there is less need to oversize systems, which could lower the overall cost of ownership.

Kokam has recently also been pushing its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) business to the data centre sector. In May SolarEdge purchased the UPS provider Gamatronic.