Harbin will finance the project which is being launched by another Kontrolmatik subsidiary, Progresiva, and is expected to come online in 2025. It will be built in Tekirdağ, near Istanbul, and was described as a “US$300 million” investment in the announcement.

It will be co-located with wind power project, the first gigawatt-scale project of its kind in Turkey, Kontrolmatik said.

On Kontrolmatik’s website, the company describes Progresiva as an investor in energy projects and an energy trader. It also claims Progresiva has the first and only standalone energy storage unit in Turkey and will commission a 250MW/1,000MWh facility in 2024 (it’s not clear if this is a separate project to the one agreed with Harbin Electric – both are in the northwest Marmara region).

A signing ceremony for the Harbin project, in the capital Ankara, was attended by the local ambassador for China, Liu Shaobin, and Turkey’s vice president Cevdet Yılmaz.

Turkey is emerging as a regional hub for lithium-ion gigafactory and energy storage system (ESS) manufacturing and is also expected to see a ramp-up in domestic energy storage installations too.

At the end of 2023, the government awarded pre-licenses to co-located energy storage projects totalling 25.6GW of power and also imposed a 30% tax on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries imported which, Energy-Storage.news was told by a local industry source, would boost the local upstream market (Premium access).

Kontrolmatik has an LFP gigafactory in Ankara which began production in 2022, building on the company’s existing ESS assembly facilities. The gigafactory was launched through subsidiary Pomega, which is also building a battery cell and ESS production facility in South Carolina, set to be completed in July 2024 – Energy-Storage.news spoke to Pomega’s US VP business development Louis Caso about it in March last year (Premium access).