--- title: "The Log" canonical: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/issue/4/the-log" publication: "The Hysteresis" publisher: "The Hysteresis" language: "en-US" guide: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/llms.txt" permalink: "https://anchor.is/the-hysteresis/issue/4/the-log" issue: 4 section: "the-log" description: "What was announced, built, and cancelled" authors: ["Elise Huan-Cartwright"] published: 2026-07-06 updated: 2026-07-04 articles: 10 --- # The Hysteresis > The Hysteresis exists to give a small cross-functional team — strategy, investment, and procurement — a shared weekly instrument for reading the battery supply chain earlier than consensus. Success means the team consistently identifies inflection points in cell pricing, supplier health, and policy enforcement weeks or months before they surface in earnings calls, annual surveys, or trade press. The commercial mechanism is internal-first: the publication proves itself as a decision tool inside the organization, then extends to paid subscribers and a practitioner community as upside. Revenue follows utility — if the team makes better-timed procurement calls and competitive assessments because of what they read here, the publication earned its place. [Read on the website]() ## Issue 4 — The Log What was announced, built, and cancelled ### Conversion Over Cancellation - [Converted Is Not One Status]() — By [Elise Huan-Cartwright]() · Published 2026-07-04 E2 counted [54 cancellations, closures, and downsizings](https://e2.org/releases/e2-clean-energy-companies-announce-nearly-3-billion-in-new-projects-cancel-4-billion/) through mid-June, $18.2 billion in lost investment. The more consequential 2026 pattern is conversion: physically real, often financed assets whose ownership, product, chemistry, financing obligor, or workforce basis has changed from the original announcement. Five distinct dimensions. Ford Kentucky changed its obligor, product, and application in separate events sourced to separate filings. Spring Hill changed chemistry (NCMA to LFP), application (EV to ESS), and workforce simultaneously. De Soto announced a product conversion with no chemistry change. ### Facility Conversion Audit - [StarPlus Energy Is Converting Everything at Once. The Evidence Trail Is Thin.]() — By [Elise Huan-Cartwright]() · Published 2026-07-04 · Format: The Stated vs. Observed Audit StarPlus Energy's Kokomo facilities were announced as a $6.3B Samsung SDI/Stellantis EV battery program backed by a $7.54B DOE conditional commitment. Since Q4 2025, Samsung SDI says it has been converting lines to ESS, pivoting from NCA to LFP, and contracting Korean cathode from L&F—starting 2027. The LFP mass production target is Q4 2026, at least two quarters before contracted cathode flows. Independent confirmation of the conversion's physical progress: none located. The corporate frame holding all of this together has not changed. What it contains has. ### Conversion Pattern Read - [US Battery Capacity Is Changing What It Serves]() — By [Elise Huan-Cartwright]() · Published 2026-07-04 · Format: Conversion Pattern Read E2 counts 54 US clean energy manufacturing cancellations, closures, and downsizings through June 2026, representing $18.2 billion in lost investment. The aggregate captures genuine losses. It does not capture facilities that changed ownership, chemistry, or end-market application while retaining physical capacity. Underneath the cancellation count, five US cell facilities disclosed such changes during 2025–2026. Four of five moved toward stationary storage. Four of five moved toward LFP. Two dissolved their original JV structures. The nameplate GWh survived, but what those GWh actually produce now serves markets that no longer substitute for each other. ### Compliance Through Conversion - [How Conversion Events Break the 45X MACR Documentation Chain]() — By [Elise Huan-Cartwright]() · Published 2026-07-04 · Format: Compliance Through Conversion IRS Notice 2026-15's MACR requirements turned 45X compliance documentation into a capital asset. Supplier certifications signed under perjury, constituent-material tracing, six-year retention: the file is what makes $35/kWh claimable. Chemistry switches reset it almost completely. Ownership transfers sever the taxpayer link. Product shifts from EV to ESS can preserve it, unless they coincide with the other two. With SEC-disclosed restructurings accelerating across the US battery manufacturing base in H1 2026, this piece maps exactly which MACR chain links break under each conversion type and how long the credit gap lasts. ### Conversion and Status Tracker - **Ford Assumes $3.8B DOE Note, Takes Full Ownership of Kentucky Battery Plants from BlueOval SK** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 SEC 8-K documents JV dissolution and DOE loan bifurcation: Kentucky plants now under Ford Energy Battery LLC, Tennessee plant retained by SK. Registry must update entity ownership, financing structure, and track whether the SK-retained Tennessee facility proceeds on its original timeline or enters delay status under the restructured arrangement. - **DOE Loan Programs Office Still Lists BlueOval SK as Three-Plant JV Despite Ford's May 2026 Restructuring** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 Federal project page, last updated December 2024, still describes a three-plant JV structure that no longer exists per Ford's SEC disclosure. Flagged because anyone sourcing facility ownership or loan status from LPO data will have stale entity and financing information; the lag between corporate disclosure and federal records is itself a trackable signal. - **Samsung SDI Secures Korean LFP Cathode Supply for StarPlus Energy's EV-to-ESS Conversion in Indiana** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 Company release names Q4 2026 LFP mass production target and a non-China cathode supply path via L&F Materials, constituting both a chemistry pivot (from high-nickel to LFP) and an application pivot (EV to ESS) at a single facility. Conversion is announced and sourcing is contracted, but no output has been demonstrated; registry should classify as "converting" until production is verified. - **SK Battery America Cuts 958 Workers at Commerce, Georgia Plant via WARN Act Filing** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 WARN Act filing documents a 37% workforce reduction at an operational plant, not a greenfield cancellation. SK cites a pivot toward BESS supply, but no contracted BESS offtake has been publicly disclosed. Tension between company framing ("strategic realignment") and the scale of the layoff warrants tracking Commerce as "operational / downsized" rather than accepting the pivot narrative at face value. - **FREYR Abandons $2.6B Georgia Battery Plant, Sells Site, Begins Repaying $27M in State and County Grants** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 Clean greenfield cancellation: zero construction completed, site sold to an unrelated buyer, state and county grant clawback underway. Useful as a registry boundary case for announced-but-never-built capacity and as one of the few instances where incentive clawback enforcement is publicly documented and in progress. - **KORE Power Cancels $1.25B KOREPlex in Arizona, Lists Site for Sale After DOE Loan Never Closed** — [Source]() — Published 2026-07-04 Facility cancelled despite an $850M DOE conditional commitment that never reached loan closing or disbursement. Contractor lien filings confirm partial site work occurred, distinguishing this from a pure paper cancellation. The outcome is a clean illustration of why the registry tracks conditional commitments and closed loans as distinct statuses: conditional approval was not, in this case, predictive of construction. ## Other sections in Issue 4 - [Signal]() - [China]() - [Korea]() - [Defense]() - [Qualification]() ## More - [Publication guide]() - [Issue archive]()