This story has been updated with details from a Friday morning press conference.

Shelbyville will soon be home to a $712 million battery plant.

Canadian Solar, a global renewable energy company, is establishing Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing, and with it, creating the largest economic development project in Shelby County history.

The project, built in two phases, will be the first Kentucky manufacturer “to create utility-scale energy storage containers.”

Unlike the BlueOval SK Battery Park in Hardin County, or the AESC battery manufacturing projects in Bowling Green, which produce electric vehicle batteries, the Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing plant will produce electric battery storage, which is often paired with solar projects or other large-scale developments.

“We’re going to be building state-of-the-art battery cells,” said Colin Parkin, president of e-STORAGE, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc. and the parent company of Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing.

The company is expected to hire 1,600 employees within its first three years and will build batteries that can be bought by utility companies and project developers to store energy for future usage.

“This is such a large investment that it’s going to create its own gravity,” Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday. “As you look at what we’re doing in batteries, bigger and better than any other state, you see the growth, we’re going to see more than just these … jobs because of this announced investment.”

Beshear, company leaders launch Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing

During a Friday morning press conference at the Governor’s Mansion, Beshear and Parkin, along with local county and state elected officials and Shawn Qu, the founder of Canadian Solar, came together to officially launch the new project.

“Electricity demand in the United States is expected to grow significantly,” Qu said Friday. “Therefore this project is putting Kentucky at the center of the effort to build a robust and secure electricity grid for this country now.”

Qu and Parkin shared they are excited to move the company into a tight-knit community.

“This is an important decision for us, and it started right from the beginning, the support from the governor and the governor’s office, the local mayor in Shelbyville, the community, everything was very welcoming to us, and it had all the right ingredients,” Parkin said Friday.

Now, the company is “mission critical” as it gears up to bring the facility online and start producing battery storage.

“In short, we’ve already become the EV battery production capital of the United States and now we’re working to become just the battery capital of the United States of America,” Beshear said. “Now, with Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing, we’re going to lead in the industrial electrification space.”

What does this massive project mean for Shelby County?

The one-million-square-foot project, located about 30 miles from downtown Louisville, will provide a much-welcomed economic boost to the county neighboring Jefferson County through current job creation and future jobs associated with a growing supply chain in the county.

“Shelbyville battery manufacturing locating in Kentucky is nothing short of historic,” Beshear told the Courier Journal in an interview on Tuesday. “This is a game changer that will bring suppliers to and around Kentucky in terms of supply chain.”

Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing is under an expedited timeline from announcement to production Parkin and Beshear shared with the Courier Journal.

Parkin said the company was fortunate to find a facility in Shelbyville that already fit the size and capabilities needed with only some retooling and minimal construction needed to outfit the building for battery production. The facility at 139 Logistics Drive, Shelbyville was previously slated to be a metal-hydrogen battery gigafactory for EnerVenue, however, that project never came to fruition.

“One of the most exciting things about this project is that it has an accelerated timeline, which, while it means a lot of work, it means these jobs come sooner to the Shelbyville and Shelby County area, and it means we have more Kentuckians employed at a much faster pace than we often see in projects this size,” Beshear said.

The facility’s initial annual production of batteries will have a combined capacity of 3 gigawatt-hours. For comparison, the LG&E and KU solar array near Harrodsburg, spanning 44,000 solar panels, has a net generating capacity of about 19 gigawatt-hours.

In the following years, the Shelbyville plant will double production capacity to a combined 6 gigawatt-hours. 

Limited production will start at the facility in mid- to late 2025 with widespread shipping and scaling expected by the first quarter of 2026, Parkin said.

The facility will also feature a research and development lab where employees will work with local universities on “constantly evolving our technology,” he added.

On top of the immediate job creation, the project also stands to build a new supply chain for the energy storage industry, possibly facilitating the relocation or expansion of other companies into the Bluegrass state.

Both Beshear and Parkin are certain this project will attract a healthy addition of new companies to Kentucky, with Parkin noting some of the sub-suppliers and partners for Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing are already in the process of moving to Kentucky to be closer to the facility, though he did not name them.

“This project is a big win for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, one of the biggest in our history,” Beshear said. “This was the exact type of forward-leading company that we know is an industry of the future, that once we located in Kentucky, we knew that we would have a decades-long relationship with and that would create opportunities above and beyond, from suppliers to others.”

Beshear said while the project is not expected to employ thousands of construction workers as the state saw with the massive BlueOval SK battery park, he is confident it will provide “hundreds” of construction trade workers with a job.

The Courier Journal previously reported the jobs created by this project would boast average hourly wages of about $25 including benefits at the proposed plant, according to negotiated, preliminary state incentives.

The project received preliminary approval for $35 million in incentives under the Kentucky Business Investment program and $5 million through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act, according to a state database. Beshear confirmed the project is still on track to receive these incentives.

“It was a very detailed analysis for us to come to the conclusion that Kentucky is the home for us, and it goes to say that it’s the community, the employees. The government support, and incentives do play a consideration for that, but it’s a decision not based only on incentives, it’s based on all those factors,” Parkin said about why the company landed on Shelbyville for its newest U.S. facility.

Growing demand for ‘resilient energy’

The battery technology soon to be produced in Shelby County is a key ingredient in a successful renewable energy transition.

Solar and wind have scaled up across the U.S., cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector at a crucial time for climate goals. Solar, in particular, has started to gain momentum in Kentucky in recent years.

However, these forms of energy rely on variable weather conditions. When the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, battery storage allows that energy to be dispatched to reliably meet customer demand.

Grid reliability is becoming a growing concern, especially as data centers and other energy-hungry developments scale up. It’s an issue many Kentucky lawmakers have taken up in their defense of fossil fuel-fired power plants.

“The demand for energy, resilient energy, in the U.S. is growing substantially,” Parkin said, and “batteries are perfectly suited” to meet that demand.

“We’re on an energy revolution here,” he said. “As we transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies, and make that dispatchable with these state-of-the-art batteries … this is going to be tremendous.”

Kentucky’s growing battery manufacturing industry could help the state and nation meet pressing energy needs.

“Kentucky helped power this country through the Industrial Revolution, through two world wars,” Beshear said, “and now we are once again going to step up and be able to provide more resiliency in our grid.”

‘Our new Kentucky home’

Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing marks the third largest project for job creation during Beshear’s two terms to date and builds on the more than $33 billion in private sector investment and 56,000 new jobs his administration has worked to attract to Kentucky.

“It’s important that these jobs are in industries and areas that we know are going to lead through the next century, that we stay on the cutting edge so that we don’t ever again feel what it’s like to lose so many jobs based on major changes in industry,” Beshear said.

This economic development announcement is the first of a new campaign by the Beshear administration targeting business growth across the Commonwealth, using the phrase “New Kentucky home.”

“We are excited to welcome Shelbyville Battery Manufacturing to their new Kentucky Home and to tell the world about all of our new Kentucky Home, one where we have state-of-the-art businesses and industries, one where market leaders like this company select us because they see the workforce and way of life that people want to be a part of,” Beshear said.

Beshear, who has emphasized recruiting international businesses to set up operations in Kentucky, said this announcement helps shape the state’s future business industries.

“We’re going to look back 10 years from now,” Beshear said, “and be able to show what this company’s stay in Kentucky has done in terms of other companies and more employment and continuing to build that great reputation that we’ve worked so hard to build.”

Contact business reporter Olivia Evans at oevans@courier-journal.com or on X at @oliviamevans_. Contact environmental reporter Connor Giffin at cgiffin@gannett.com or on X @byconnorgiffin.