IEA constructed another solar facility for Silicon Ranch Corp., the Appling Solar Farm in Georgia

Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives Inc. (IEA) has been awarded a contract by Silicon Ranch Corp. to construct the Cedar Springs Solar Ranch in Early County, Ga. The 70 MW AC solar project will provide power to Green Power EMC, the renewable energy supplier for 38 Georgia electric cooperatives.

Silicon Ranch is funding the installation of the Cedar Springs Solar Ranch, and will own and operate the solar array. Silicon Ranch’s wholly owned subsidiary, SR EPC, has awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to IEA Constructors, a wholly owned subsidiary of IEA. Construction is scheduled to commence by the end of the first quarter of 2022 and the facility is expected to be online by the end of the year.

“IEA is excited to continue its strong partnership with Silicon Ranch, a true pioneer in the solar energy space,” says Joe Broom, IEA’s senior vice president of solar construction operations. “We look forward to utilizing local skilled labor to help safely and efficiently complete construction of the Cedar Springs Solar Ranch project, while bringing additional clean energy options to the people of Georgia.”

IEA’s scope of work includes the installation of owner furnished modules and full balance of system EPC construction, including all civil, mechanical and electrical work. More than 215,000 First Solar Series 6 modules will be installed across the 1,400-acre site in rural southwest Georgia.

“The Cedar Springs Solar Ranch is our latest opportunity to showcase some of the special qualities that make Georgia such a great place for business, including its renowned workforce,” states Reagan Farr, Silicon Ranch’s co-founder and CEO. “Early County holds many firsts for Silicon Ranch, including the first-ever new build facility to incorporate our Regenerative Energy model for land management with White Oak Pastures. We are pleased to partner again with IEA and White Oak Pastures to build on this legacy, and we thank our partners at Green Power EMC, as well as the Early County Board of Commissioners, for making this meaningful investment possible.”

Silicon Ranch will return the land housing the Cedar Springs Solar Ranch to agricultural production through managed sheep grazing under and around solar panels and other regenerative pastureland management practices via its Regenerative Energy platform. Through these regenerative practices, Silicon Ranch will restore the land to a functioning grassland ecosystem and deliver additional benefits to the region, such as carbon sequestration, restored soil health, improved water quality and enhanced biodiversity.

“Four Georgia electric cooperatives will share in the power generated by this new facility which will produce enough clean energy to help serve more than 11,000 households,” comments Jeff Pratt, Green Power EMC’s president. “In addition to adding more low-cost solar power to our members’ renewable energy portfolio, we are proud that this project will create job opportunities and support economic development in Early County.”

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Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani. Image: Flickr.

Reliance New Energy Limited, part of the massive Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, has acquired LFP battery manufacturer Lithium Werks for US$61 million two months after buying a sodium-ion battery producer.

Reliance has agreed to buy all of the assets of Lithium Werks which produces lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. The assets include its entire patent portfolio, manufacturing facilities in China, key business contracts and hiring of existing employees as a going concern.

It follows hot on the heels from Reliance’s acquisition of sodium-ion battery technology firm Faradion for an enterprise value of US$135 million. The Lithium Werks deal is being presented as an acquisition of assets rather than the company itself through a share purchase, though it appears to mean effectively the same thing.

The Indian conglomerate says the combination of the two further strengthens its technology portfolio and establish an end-to-end battery ecosystem with the manufacture of key supply chain materials and cells. This will allow it to produce batteries consisting of different chemistries for various applications across energy storage and mobility and battery module systems.

“Along with Faradion, Lithium Werks will enable us to accelerate our vision of establishing India at the core of developments in global battery chemistries and help us provide a secure, safe and high-performance supply chain to the large and growing Indian EV and Energy Storage markets,” said Mr. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries Limited, India’s largest company by market capitalisation.

The company said at the time that it might use Faradion’s sodium-ion technology for its fully-integrated energy storage gigafactory in Jamnagar, India, though was not as specific about what it would do with Lithium Werks’ product as yet.

LFP is increasingly being adopted by the energy storage industry, thanks largely to lower fire risk and fewer supply chain issues versus nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) chemistry while its lower energy-density is less of an issue than for EVs. That said, raw materials price rises, particularly for lithium carbonate, have seen even LFP costs rise in the past few months.

The sector is set to grow in India substantially in the coming years with 27GW/108GWh of battery storage needed by 2029/30 according to the country’s Central Electricity Authority. To facilitate this, the Ministry of Power last week issued new guidelines for procuring BESS as assets for generation, transmission and distribution and ancillary services.

And the appetite for storage was demonstrated in January when a government scheme to support domestic battery manufacturing received bids totalling 130GWh of proposals, more than double the 50GWh of capacity the incentive will support.

Reliance is not the first conglomerate to make inroads into the EV and energy storage-focused battery space through sizeable acquisitions. Transport, industry and defense-specialised BESS supplier Saft was bought by French energy group Total (now TotalEnergies) back in 2016.

Last year, automative giant Borg Warner bought German vehicle battery pack maker AKASOL while Tesla acquired Colorado-based SilLion which had been working on a high-loading silicon anode and electrode technology for battery cells.

It is Reliance’s seventh acquisition in the renewable energy space since September, most of which have been in the solar energy space which you can read about on our sister site PV Tech.

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Battery storage units at Windcharger, Alberta’s first grid-scale project. Image: TransAlta via Twitter.

Three solar power plant projects are in development in Alberta, Canada, which will add nearly 300MW of battery storage to the province’s grid.

Alberta’s first grid-scale battery project, Windcharger, a 10MW/20MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at a wind farm, was only brought online in late 2020 by developer TransAlta Renewables.

The province’s first solar-plus-storage project was only given approval in April of that year, combining 13.5MW of solar with 8MW/8MWh of batteries. 

Alberta-headquartered developer Greengate Power Corporation established a project subsidiary called Jurassic Solar to begin development on a project called Jurassic Solar+ in early 2021. 

Anticipated to have a 35 year lifetime, Jurassic Solar+ will be 216MWac of solar PV, combined with 80MW/80MWh of BESS using 60 inverter/transformer stations and connected to the Alberta Interconnected Electric System (AIES), the province’s transmission grid.  

It will be built on privately-owned land, and Greengate Power held an online ‘open house’ event to share information on the project with the community and local stakeholders last week. The developer hopes to gain permitting and approvals during this year, for construction to begin in Q2 2023 and come online around a year later. 

Meanwhile, Westbridge Energy Corporation, a greenfield renewable energy developer with its registered headquarters in Vancouver, is seeking approvals of its own for two large-scale solar PV plants colocated with batteries. 

Westbridge offered a corporate update to investors at the beginning of March which included notes on its Georgetown Solar and Sunnynook Solar projects. 

Georgetown will be a 278MWp solar plant, Sunnynook a 236MWp PV project. Each would share a site and interconnection to the grid with a 100MW BESS. 

The developer is preparing its application to the regulatory Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) for approval on Georgetown, having gotten a “low risk” rating for an environmental impact submission in February. It is also nearing the end of its Connection Process Stage 2 with grid operator Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO).

Westbridge said further design and engineering activities on Georgetown will begin this quarter. Sunnynook is also in the Stage 2 Connection Process, with its remaining environmental studies, stakeholder engagement and other permitting activities to be initiated soon. 

“The recent volatility of power prices and intermittency of renewable energy generation has reiterated the increasing importance of developing storage projects,” Westbridge CEO Stefano Romano said. 

“Battery storage assets allow to store generation until it can be economically dispatched into the grid as well as providing services to the grid with the target of improving reliability, supporting renewables integration and deferring transmission upgrades.”

A handful of other interesting battery projects are in development in Alberta: vanadium flow battery provider Invinity Energy Systems was recently awarded a contract to supply a 2.8MW/8.4MWh system at a 21MWp solar plant in a project part-funded by the provincial government’s Emissions Reduction Alberta scheme. 

Another is a 180MW BESS which would be charged from a nearby hydroelectric plant which TransAlta is developing, called Watercharger.

Aerospace and defence tech company Lockheed Martin has said the first large-scale pilot project for its own proprietary flow battery technology will be at another Alberta solar PV plant. 

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Gore Street’s Lower Road BESS project in the UK. Image: Gore Street.

London Stock Exchange-listed energy storage investor-developer Gore Street has acquired a portfolio of eight energy storage assets in Texas, US.

It follows the energy storage fund entering the German market with the acquisition of a 90% stake in a 28MWh operational energy storage asset in Cremzow earlier this month.

The portfolio of Texan assets have been acquired from Perfect Power Solutions Texas and have a total capacity of 79.2MW.

Three of the 9.9MW/20MWh systems, which use LG Energy Solution lithium-ion batteries, began operation in September 2021, with the remaining five expected to enter operation within the next year.

The battery energy storage assets will participate in Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), providing ancillary services in a state that has seen rapid expansion of intermittent renewable energy generation in recent years. This will primarily be through the response reserve service market, but also day ahead/real time trading to capture value from system volatility.

Following the acquisition, Gore Street has 262MW of operating assets, and a total portfolio of 708MW. For the Texan sites, a purchase agreement has been signed, and the acquisition is expected to close in 30 days.

“This acquisition presents a new high-quality counterparty, ERCOT, for our services within a significant market managing the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texan customers,” Gore Street Capital CEO Alex O’Cinneide said.

“The portfolio itself presents a blend of operational and development assets which adds immediate revenue generating assets to our portfolio, whilst providing the opportunity to utilise our proven in house technical and development capabilities to deliver systems at a competitive cost in an attractive market.”

In related news, Gore Street just announced a deal with Nidec ASI for the provision of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for its 49.9MW Ferrymuir and 79.9MW Stony battery storage sites in the UK.

Both assets are one-hour duration, beginning-of-life energy storage systems. Ferrymuir is located in county Fife, Scotland, while Stony is located close to Milton Keynes in southern England.

The contracts include the EPC arrangements and long-term service agreements for maintenance and operation, including availability and energy capacity warranties and stringent performance requirements to be demonstrated by Nidec ASI, Gore Street said.

Both assets are scheduled to be energised in Q4 2022, with both to achieve commercial operation in February 2023.

They will both operate in the UK’s Dynamic Containment and firm frequency response ancillary services markets, as well as and wholesale and Balancing Mechanism trading. They will also be able to participate in new services made available by transmission operator National Grid and distribution network operators, according to the company.

Gore Street-Nidec ASI story by Alice Grundy

Gore Street Texas portfolio story by Molly Lempriere

These originally appeared as two separate items on Solar Power Portal.

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The Slate solar+energy storage project while under construction (Photo: Recurrent Energy)

The Slate solar and energy storage project of Goldman Sachs Renewable Power (GSRP), an affiliate of Goldman Sachs Asset Management that owns more than 850 solar and storage projects, is now in operation. The 390 MW solar plus 561 MWh storage project was originally developed by Recurrent Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar.

“We are thrilled that Slate is now online and serving California-based organizations,” says Jon Yoder, head of GSRP. There is significant demand throughout California for solar and energy storage projects at this scale, and we look forward to continuing to invest in projects like Slate that will help facilitate the state’s transition to a carbon-free power grid. We thank our partners at Recurrent once again for delivering on this project and we look forward to operating this project for decades to come.”

The Slate project, located in Kings County, Calif., is supported by power purchase agreements with five California-based organizations – Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Central Coast Community Energy (3CE), the Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority (PWRPA), Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE), and Stanford University.

“Congratulations to all the organizations and individuals across both the private sector and public sector that contributed to making this project happen, helping put Kings County at the forefront of California’s clean energy future,” states Siva Gunda, California Energy Commission’s vice chair. Meeting the state’s 100 percent clean electricity goals requires an unprecedented amount of new solar and storage resources to come online and a tremendous amount of collaboration to build the type of solutions at the scale we need.”

“Slate is a landmark project that will help California meet its leading renewable energy targets,” adds Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar. “We started developing Slate in 2015, and we’re proud that this project was contracted as one of the first utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in the state, thanks to the forward-thinking leadership among the projects’ customers. Recurrent’s energy storage business is now on an equal footing with our long-running solar business, and we’re pleased to demonstrate our execution capabilities on another project with our partners at GSRP.”

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Dominion Energy Virginia’s Gloucester Solar facility in Gloucester County, Va.

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved a significant expansion of new solar and energy storage projects for Dominion Energy Virginia customers. Once in operation, the projects will provide nearly 1,000 MW of carbon-free electricity.

The approved expansion includes 15 Dominion Energy Virginia projects, as well as power purchase agreements (PPAs) with 24 other projects owned by third-party developers.

“This is another significant milestone in Virginia’s transition to energy independence,” says Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia. “These projects will support thousands of good jobs and hundreds of millions in economic activity in communities across Virginia. This is a positive step forward for our customers, the environment and Virginia’s economy.”

Construction of the 15 Dominion Energy Virginia projects is expected to generate more than $880 million in economic benefits across Virginia and will support nearly 4,200 jobs. The projects are expected to be completed in 2022 and 2023 and will add approximately $1.13 to the typical residential customers’ monthly bill.

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Cypress Creek Renewables (CCR) has placed multi-year order for approximately 315 MW of Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd.’s high-efficiency shingled bifacial Performance line solar modules to power multiple solar projects in both Washington and Texas. This new order follows an earlier purchase by CCR of 48 MW of Maxeon’s Performance line modules.

“Cypress Creek Renewables is excited to be working with Maxeon Solar Technologies to fulfill this mission as we move forward with further development opportunities,” says Sarah Slusser, CEO at Cypress Creek. “Having a solid module partner at this time with a strong manufacturing presence provides our organization with the comfort needed to turn our focus to a seamless project execution strategy.”

CCR’s power plant projects will be supplied from Maxeon’s recently expanded Performance line module capacity designed to serve the U.S. solar power plant market with high-efficiency bifacial products that optimize customer levelized cost of energy (LCOE).

“We believe that the U.S. solar market is poised for continued strong growth,” says Jeff Waters, CEO at Maxeon Solar Technologies. “This deal validates Maxeon’s strong position as a major module supplier into the large and growing U.S. utility scale market. We are pleased to be further strengthening our relationship with key strategic partners like Cypress Creek Renewables and we look forward to continuing help power their growth in the United States.”

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Drone picture of the Slate project. Image: Goldman Sachs Renewable Power.

Goldman Sachs Renewable Power (GSRP) has cut the ribbon to signal the completion of work on Slate, a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Kings County, California. 

The project pairs 300MW of solar PV with a 140.25MW/561MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

Construction began in January 2021. The renewable energy owner-operator and affiliate of Goldman Sachs Asset Management bought the project shortly before that from its original developer, Canadian Solar subsidiary Recurrent Energy. 

When the project was first announced in October 2018, two California energy suppliers, Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SCVE) and Monterey Bay Community Power (MBCP) had already signed 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) deals for the plant’s output.

The pair are Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), energy suppliers licensed as load-serving entities with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and offering their member-customers the choice of where their power comes from, while still being able to use the distribution networks of California’s three major investor-owned utilities. 

Since then, three more off-takers have signed with GSRP for Slate: Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority, which represents the power management interests of nine California Irrigation Districts, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit group and Stanford University. 

The plant’s combination of solar PV with four-hour duration battery storage enables each group to purchase dispatchable renewable energy into the evenings and help manage their peak loads. 

Energy-Storage.news reported on two separate financing transactions which were closed by French financial services and banking group Natixis, one for US$515.9 million in senior secured credit facilities, the other a US$150 million Equity Bridge Loan which was used to fund GSRP’s equity contribution into the project. 

California has of course become the US’ leading market for battery storage in the past couple of years, with the majority of new additions being four-hour duration projects. Grid operator CAISO recently noted that 2,359MW of storage was deployed in its service area during 2021 — more than half the amount installed in the whole US during the year.

During the Bootleg wildfire in July, CAISO said it was able to access around a gigawatt of storage resources that helped keep the lights on and has repeatedly said that battery storage of four hours duration or more will be key to progressing California’s transition to renewable energy while maintaining grid reliability. 

A closer look at the Slate project. Image: GSRP.

With more than 60% of solar projects in developer and utility queues in the US planned to be paired with storage, California is again at the heart of the industry trend. 

Developer Terra-Gen is building the world’s largest solar-plus-storage project there, the Edwards & Sanborn project at Edwards Air Force Base, pairing 1,118MW of solar PV with 2,165MWh of BESS, albeit the project is being built in phases.

An interesting aspect of that project is that a portion of it was recently included in a PPA deal Terra-Gen signed with another CCA, San Jose Clean Energy, to guarantee the delivery of 62MW of energy from the facility between 6pm and 10pm each day, in effect making it a 16-hour daily clean energy resource. 

Earlier this month, D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments announced the signing of a renewable PPA for another sizeable California solar-plus-storage plant, signing a deal with Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) for a 200MWac PV and 400MWh BESS plant to be online by 2024.  

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Renewable Power now owns nearly 900 solar and storage projects in the US. In March last year, Jacob Steubing, one of the company’s VPs, said that battery storage “is a very exciting market,” which had led it to get involved relatively early. 

Goldman Sachs Asset Management recently made a commitment to invest US$250 million into Canadian advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) company Hydrostor, which is developing long-duration storage projects at very large-scale. This includes two projects in California, one of 3,200MWh and the other 4,000MWh. 

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A render of American Battery Factory’s battery cell.

Energy-storage.news speaks with the CEO of American Battery Factory Inc (ABF), a relatively unknown company with big plans for a national network of LFP battery gigafactories in the US, targeting the energy storage market.

ABF claimed last week that it is “..developing the first-ever network of safe lithium-iron phosphate battery (LFP) cell gigafactories in the United States” with each factory creating 300-1,000 jobs. The company was incorporated 15 months ago and is a spinout of Utah-based solar and battery pack supplier Lion Energy.

ABF CEO Paul Charles says that the company will be building LFP battery cells targeting three specific market segments: military uses, larger low-speed electric vehicles (EVs), and stationary energy storage. It will sell to pack integrators rather than build whole systems itself.

“We believe that the energy storage market will be as large and potentially even larger than the EV space,” he says.

“Because the EV space needs to have energy storage for it to be successful,” he adds, citing an example of how residential storage systems can get around bottlenecks in local EV charging infrastructure capacity.

The company expects to have its first 3GWh production facility with R&D centre and substantial pilot line up and running in 18-24 months – meaning Q4 2023/Q1 2024 – with 3-6GWh expansions to it every six to twelve months. That first facility will cost a little under US$500 million while the overall build-out to 15GWh will cost US$1.5-2 billion as the unit cost falls over time.

“It will be the first factory for cell manufacturing that’s geared specifically for energy storage, military and selected EVs,” he claims.

Charles won’t say where it will be but claims typical barriers like planning and power will not be an issue and he is looking at multiple locations for additional factories. ABF also claims the cycle life for its batteries will be over 10,000 cycles, higher than the market norm for LFP batteries.

“We really believe that LFP is a mature technology. It’s safe, it’s proven, it’s low cost and it’s environmentally friendly. Plus, we have a roadmap for enhancements for those core technologies as well,” he says.

“We’re not saying other chemistries aren’t good, but for our market segments LFP is the way to go.”

The company is amongst a few others that have announced new gigafactory projects in the US. But, the other players have either already closed and announced several hundreds of millions of dollars in financing like Freyr, or are existing massive companies in the supply chain like Tesla, Panasonic, SK Innovation, Borg Warner/AKASOL and Envision AESC, which just today (16 March) announced a gigafactory plan for Mercedes in Alabama.

Energy-Storage.news asks CEO Paul Charles how a relatively unknown company that doesn’t fit the above profile can do this from a technical and financial standpoint.

“We’ve been very quiet in the marketplace but have built up our internal R&D team at ABF. They’re all US citizens and have experience in designing, developing and manufacturing prototype high-level units. We’re now a dozen-plus employees at ABF and also have access to the 130 employees of Lion Energy. We’ve spent the last 15 months identifying the supply chain here and found plenty of opportunities to source materials in the US,” he says.

The ABF team includes CTO James Mosby who joined ABF after a year at Panasonic’s operations within Tesla’s Nevada gigafactory, with stints at French battery manufacturer Saft and flow battery producer VIZn Energy Systems prior to that.

On how it is funding the gigafactory project, Charles claims it has unnamed private backers but that ABF will take advantage of public sector funding opportunities when they arise.

“We’re obviously moving forward with the Department of Energy funding but that will be for an enhancement to factory number two or three etc. Private sector capital is moving much, much faster. We have not made an announcement in terms of who our capital partners are but the response has been very, very favourable.”

He says one way that it’s managed to move quickly is by choosing high-tension membrane facility technology for its buildings. “These can literally be built in a US factory in about 10 weeks and it only takes a couple of months to stand that up. These are airtight and half the cost of construction.”

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company uses the same tension-based membrane facility tech, or ‘sprung structure’ for its headquarters in Kent, Washington. Image: Blue Origin.

“Another thing that is quite different is that we’re not building massive factories because there’s always the question of how you get the 10,000-plus employees for a 100GWh facility. Ours only need 300-1000 employees which is a sweet spot. And that also means our model is decentralised and we can put our factories next to our customers – the solution providers and pack integrators.”

Like everyone with a supply chain, ABF is also feeling the pinch. Charles says that getting equipment in for its factory is its longest lead time due to soaring demand worldwide. “We’ve literally been to five different areas around the world where the equipment is manufactured, from Germany, India, Japan through to China and Korea.”

He also claims that ABF has offtake agreements and LOIs (letter of intent) which go “far beyond our first factory” and that we can expect another announcement soon with more details, though wouldn’t say which market segment they were coming from.

The company also wants to vertically integrate the supply chain into the US for battery production over time as the US seeks to domesticate battery production to be less reliant on China.

China had a 75% share of the 767GWh lithium-ion battery cell production market in 2020 according to Clean Energy Associates. It forecasts that the US and Europe will increase their own market share to a combine 28% by 2030, reducing China’s dominance to 66%.

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David Brearley

Mayfield Renewables has expanded upon its core design and engineering services with the launch of new technical services for the clean energy industry, including market research, technical content production and professional training. Mayfield Renewables’ new services will be provided by the company’s newest hires: David Brearley, Justine Sanchez, Joe Schwartz and Kyle Bolger.

“The depth and breadth of our industry experience is unparalleled now that we have these four stellar industry experts onboard,” states Ryan Mayfield, founder and CEO of Mayfield Renewables. “With our expanded team, we’re uniquely able to leverage our design firm experience and industry network to provide top-tier technical expertise for the rapidly growing solar-plus-storage industry. The entire Mayfield team welcomes these newest additions to our all-star lineup of passionate clean energy professionals.”

The new technical content strategy and production services provided by the company’s team include short- and long-form technical content; market research and analysis; product strategy and positioning; and videography and custom graphics. Mayfield Renewables also now offers new training opportunities through NABCEP-certified solar-plus-storage code, design and product sessions led by its respective experts.

These new technical consulting, content and professional training offerings complement the company’s core system design and engineering expertise, ranging from project feasibility to complete system design and engineering.

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