Seven facility-level changes this cycle. Two matter for near-term supply planning: EnerSys cut Greenville's planned initial capacity by roughly 75–80%, taking 3–4 GWh out of the US cell pipeline, and Samsung SDI's purchase of GM's New Carlisle stake sits in a gap between an English release that says "acquired" and a Korean regulatory filing that does not, with no closing document surfaced through August 21. Warren's workforce recall is complete but recurring production is unverified; the remaining four entries — DOE Round 3 selections, Sila's conditional loan, and the Forge Nano and Anthro groundbreakings — are pre-commercial and do not change addressable supply this planning year.
EnerSys — Greenville, South Carolina
Product: Lithium-ion cells (aerospace, defense, specialized industrial) Status: Downsized; pre-construction Last verified: 2026-08-21
What is established. EnerSys's July 23 Form 8-K reduced planned initial capacity from approximately 4–5 GWh to up to 1 GWh and shrank the facility footprint. The Form 10-Q retains a first-half fiscal 2028 construction-start target, subject to finalization of the DOE award and other conditions, with full production approximately three years after construction begins. Gross project cost is now approximately USD 650 million, against approximately USD 200 million of anticipated state and local incentives. Q1 FY2027 earnings materials describe near-term work as completing the local grant process, federal environmental review, permitting, capital-timing refinement, and project governance. They do not narrow the construction window.
What is not established. The revised DOE grant of approximately USD 150 million remains subject to final documentation, negotiation, and compliance requirements per the 10-Q. No subsequent filing establishes execution of a revised assistance agreement or any disbursement. EnerSys references an unnamed technology partner with "decades-long" ties within its aerospace and defense supply base; the counterparty replacing Verkor is not identified.
The capacity cut and the schedule slip are both filed facts, which is rare enough to note. Classification follows the framework in the prior denominator audit.
Synergy Cells (Samsung SDI / GM JV) — New Carlisle, Indiana
Product: Prismatic cells; Samsung proposes stationary-storage-first with continuing EV applications Status: Delayed; erected shell, construction paused Last verified: 2026-08-21
What is established. Samsung SDI and GM agreed to terminate their joint-venture arrangement, with Samsung acquiring GM's 49.99% stake. Samsung's Korean announcement and KRX regulatory filing of August 11 describe the decision to acquire. Reuters reported Samsung as intending to acquire. Local reporting documented an indefinite construction pause after completion of the building exterior. St. Joseph County's project page still describes Synergy Cells as a GM–Samsung joint venture with a December 2027 substantial-completion date.
Closing status: not independently verified. Samsung's English-language release uses completed language ("has acquired"). The Korean regulatory filing, which is the legally controlling document under KRX disclosure rules, uses prospective language. Samsung's DART disclosure index through August 21 shows no separately identified closing notice; the August 21 filings concern Samsung Display shares, not the GM interest. No reviewed primary record gives a closing date, acquisition consideration, or amended ownership table. This publication's prior audit treated signed economic control as better established than legal closing. That assessment holds.
What is not established. Revised capacity, chemistry, equipment scope, construction restart date, commercial-operation date, amended incentives, and customer qualification status. Samsung's regulatory filing states that the existing investment plan will change; the specific revisions are not finalized. The previously announced 27–36 GWh EV plan cannot be carried forward as a settled replacement scope.
The largest announced US prismatic facility now has no confirmed capacity and no confirmed demand segment. A pivot toward grid storage would put it in a different competitive set with different qualification cycles, but nothing has been disclosed that a buyer could plan against.
Ultium Cells Warren — Warren, Ohio
Product: EV cells (GM–LG Energy Solution JV) Status: Ramping (output unverified) Last verified: 2026-08-17
What is established. Reuters reported the plant was scheduled to restart after a seven-month shutdown with approximately 1,400 workers. On August 17, Business Journal Daily reported that the final temporarily laid-off employees had returned. The UAW local president was quoted saying production would ramp once training was complete.
What is not established. No reviewed evidence establishes a dated post-shutdown production run, a current GWh rate, recurring shipments, saleable yield, or customer-accepted GM volume. A workforce recall verifies staffing, not output. The separation is the same one applied in the LGES SOP audit: training, line qualification, and yield ramp sit between a staffed plant and a shipping one, and that interval runs weeks to months. The "ramping" label reflects trajectory and stated intent, not confirmed production.
DOE Battery Materials, Manufacturing and Recycling — Round 3
Product: Lithium, cobalt, black-mass refining, cathode rejuvenation, ethylene carbonate, lithium-metal/prelithiation, silicon-anode electrodes and cells Financing status: Selected for award negotiations; no completed awards Last verified: 2026-08-21
What is established. DOE's program pages for materials processing and manufacturing and recycling list seven projects selected within a combined USD 500 million round, announced August 20.
| Project | Focus | Location | Federal Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waterleaf / Lilac Solutions | Lithium | Utah | USD 100M |
| Jervois | Cobalt refinery | TBD | USD 100M |
| Nth Cycle | Black-mass refinery | Southeastern US | USD 100M |
| Princeton NuEnergy | — | Georgia | USD 50M |
| Arcanum Ventures | — | — | USD 50M |
| Elevated Materials | — | — | USD 50M |
| Coreshell | — | San Leandro | USD 50M |
What is not established. Selection for negotiations is not a commitment to issue an award. DOE's funding documentation states this explicitly, and notes that final amounts can change and that terms must be agreed before project work proceeds. Neither program page shows any of the seven as an executed award or assistance agreement. Total project costs, private cost shares, construction schedules, operating dates, and production capacities are unpublished for all seven. USD 500 million of announced federal share converts to zero units of forecastable supply because not one selection in the batch carries a public tonnage or GWh figure.
Sila Nanotechnologies — Moses Lake, Washington (expansion) and proposed cell facility
Product: Silicon-carbon anode material; proposed lithium-ion specialty cells Financing status: Conditional loan commitment; not closed Last verified: 2026-08-21
What is established. On August 7, the Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital announced a conditional loan commitment of up to USD 1.4 billion to expand Sila's silicon-carbon anode production and support a lithium-ion cell-manufacturing facility. The government release calls it a proposed loan. Sila's announcement says definitive financing documents remain conditional on financial, legal, technical, and diligence requirements.
What is not established. No release through August 21 states that definitive documents were executed, that conditions were satisfied, or that financial close occurred. Expanded anode tonnage, cell-facility GWh, construction schedule, loan maturity, draw schedule, and committed buyers are undisclosed. No capital has moved.
Sila's anode material and its proposed cell production intersect with 45X production-credit eligibility questions. Those are handled in the policy piece.
Forge Battery (Forge Nano subsidiary) — Morrisville, North Carolina
Product: Specialty lithium-ion cells (defense, aerospace, high-performance) Status: Under construction Last verified: 2026-08-21
What is established. Local reporting documented Forge Nano's August 19 groundbreaking, with production targeted for 2028. The company describes the expansion as targeting approximately 3 GWh of annual capacity.
Forge Nano's July 24 SEC registration filing is the most informative disclosure in this batch, because it puts dated documents behind claims that elsewhere in the registry exist only as press releases. It establishes that Forge Battery and DOE executed an assistance agreement on April 16, 2026 for the previously selected USD 100 million grant, and that Forge is drawing against that grant as reimbursement for site-development costs already incurred. The same filing discloses a Samsung SDI offtake: 250 MWh per year for three years after facility operations begin, a USD 10 million Series D investment, a USD 10 million PIPE (a private placement into the public company), equipment supply, technical support, and access to Samsung's raw-material purchasing prices. The company's public announcement describes the procurement agreement as conditional, with purchases beginning in 2028.
What is not established. Cumulative DOE cash drawn is undisclosed. Cell pricing, pricing formula, annual delivery cadence, acceptance criteria, qualification requirements, and termination triggers for the Samsung offtake are not public. The SEC filing carries an unreconciled internal discrepancy on Samsung's equipment-performance guarantee — 80% in one section, 90% in another — for overall equipment effectiveness, the standard measure of line uptime and yield. On a 3 GWh nameplate that ten-point difference is roughly 300 MWh of annual output, which is not a rounding error.
Forge was previously held in the denominator-future mapping pending physical construction evidence. An executed assistance agreement with active reimbursement drawing, a named offtake counterparty, and a groundbreaking together move the facility out of the announced cluster and into verifiable construction.
Anthro Energy — Louisville, Kentucky
Product: Advanced electrolyte Status: Under construction (existing-building conversion) Last verified: 2026-08-18
What is established. Local reporting documented the August 18 groundbreaking at an existing 150,000-square-foot building. Investment exceeds USD 40 million; the target is approximately 12,000 metric tons of annual electrolyte production and more than 100 employees. The company describes that volume as equivalent to the electrolyte requirement for 25 GWh of battery production. The prior DOE selection was USD 24.9 million.
What is not established. Equipment installation, commissioning, customer qualification, contracted output, and DOE grant disbursement status. Public descriptions differ on timing: one source targets 2028 manufacturing, another reports a late-2027 opening. Neither is evidence of commissioned production.
Electrolyte is the segment of the US cell supply chain with the least domestic capacity at scale, and it is a qualified input — cell makers requalify when the formulation or the supplier changes, a multi-quarter process. If Anthro hits 12,000 MT on its own equivalence, it covers a material fraction of currently commissioned US cell capacity. The qualification timeline, not the construction timeline, will determine when that matters.
- New Carlisle completion deadline: St. Joseph County's December 2027 substantial-completion date requires approval from three county bodies to extend, making it the next scheduled public evidence event for the paused facility.
- BIS black-mass allocation rule: The domestic-sale mandate taking effect August 27 governs disposition but not refining throughput, so early compliance evidence will need to distinguish seller allocation from qualified domestic processing.
- Forge Nano OEE discrepancy: The SEC registration filing cites both 80% and 90% overall equipment effectiveness for Samsung's performance guarantee, and no amendment or erratum has reconciled the figures.
- DOE Round 3 award progression: DOE's own program pages still distinguish "selected" from "awarded" for the seven Round 3 projects, and the first executed assistance agreements will establish whether proposed federal shares survive negotiation at their announced levels.