Battery Storage Manufacturing and ABB Robot Cells

Battery storage manufacturing is the work of turning thousands of battery cells into the shipping-container systems that now sit beside solar farms, wind parks and substations. At one new European plant, a single 5 MWh container holds about 5,000 cells. This post looks at the battery rooms that came before, the first grid batteries and the move to lithium-ion containers, and then at how factories in Europe and India are automating the assembly in 2026. It also covers where ABB robots already work in this field and where they could fit next.

Rows of battery containers at the Reid Gardner battery energy storage project near Moapa, Nevada, 2025. Photo: Sig. Chiocciola / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From battery rooms to the first grid batteries

Long before anyone spoke of grid storage, buildings kept rows of glass and lead cells in a battery room. Telephone exchanges ran on them, power stations used them to keep switchgear and standby systems alive, and banks and offices used them for backup. In 1890 the Western Union telegraph office in New York had 20,000 wet cells. The rooms were kept apart because wet cells gave off acid fumes and, when overcharged, hydrogen, so they needed their own ventilation and temperature control.

A room of accumulators in the Kasvereeniging bank building in Amsterdam, 1933. Photo: Willem van de Poll / Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Every cell in those rooms was filled, connected and checked by hand. Workers topped up electrolyte, cleaned terminals and bolted lead connectors between jars, and the whole bank was there to carry a building or an exchange through a power cut. In the 1980s utilities built the first battery storage power plants, still with lead-acid batteries. Nickel-cadmium, nickel metal hydride and sodium-sulphur systems followed in later decades, and these plants were still built as individual projects.

A bank of lead-acid cells joined by bolted connectors. Photo: Pseudoznanstvenik / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Lithium-ion changed the format. Since about 2010 utility-scale plants have used mostly lithium-ion cells, and makers began packing them into standard shipping containers that could be built in a factory, trucked to site and connected. The project that made the idea famous was the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, built by Tesla and connected on 1 December 2017 with 100 MW and 129 MWh. It was expanded to 150 MW and 193.5 MWh in 2020. Neoen owns and runs it, next to the Hornsdale Wind Farm in the Mid North of the state.

The 1 MW, 4 MWh containerized battery built by UniEnergy Technologies for Avista Utilities in Pullman, Washington, 2015. Photo: UniEnergy Technologies / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Inside a battery storage factory in 2026

Grid batteries worldwide reached about 267 GW and 610 GWh in 2025, after 104 GW were added that year. To see how the containers are built, ESS News toured Maxxen Energy's new factory in Aydın, Türkiye, and published its report on 7 October 2026. The $35 million, 20,000 square metre plant has a nameplate capacity of 5 GWh a year and runs at about 1.5 GWh. It builds a 5 MWh DC Box from 314 Ah lithium iron phosphate cells supplied by Hithium, and from January to September it delivered 664 MWh to 21 projects.

A CATL 302 Ah lithium iron phosphate cell, the large prismatic format used in storage systems. Photo: Aeroid / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The line has four stages. Cells are pre-charged and tested automatically in a sealed clean room, with every barcode scanned, and the energy used is captured in the site's own storage. Robots then stack 104 cells into each module, the cell poles are laser cleaned and laser welded, and 3D cameras check the welds. Modules are bonded to cooling plates and leak tested, and finally cranes and automated guided vehicles slide racks of about 667 kg each into a 20 foot container. Maxxen uses KUKA robots, as does a 20 GWh plant Utex New Energy plans in Nagpur, India, reported on 13 October.

An ABB IRB 4600 in the battery pack assembly and module test line JOT Automation built for an energy storage manufacturer. Photo: ABB

ABB robots are not in either of those plants, but they already build energy storage elsewhere. ABB reports that system integrator JOT Automation built a battery pack assembly and module test line for an energy storage manufacturer around an ABB IRB 4600, with throughput up six fold. JOT pointed to repetitive work and heavy parts as the reasons manual production was hard on staff, and said the robots improved safety for the workforce. ABB also supplied IRB 390, IRB 4600 and IRB 6700 robots to Scania's battery assembly plant in Södertälje, and it aims its larger IRB 5710 and IRB 5720 at picking and placing battery modules. Our EV battery assembly post covers the vehicle side.

An ABB robot working over battery modules in a robot cell at ABB's plant in Baden, Switzerland. Photo: ABB

What comes next for battery storage manufacturing

Cells keep getting bigger. Maxxen plans to move from 314 Ah to 587 Ah cells by the end of 2027, and the Utex line is designed for cells up to 628 Ah. Heavier cells make each lift harder on people, and every container still needs its welds and connections checked. Each change of cell size also means new grippers and new paths, so lines are usually planned and tested first in RobotStudio before steel is cut.

Lithium iron phosphate cells joined by copper busbars into a 52 V, 145.6 kWh battery. Photo: Yo-Co-Man / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The last stage is still the most manual. ESS News described container integration and load testing at Maxxen as the most labour intensive part, with people fitting power electronics, cooling, HVAC and fire protection. That is where collaborative robots such as an ABB GoFa CRB 15000 could take over repetitive screwing or cable work beside the crew, and where AMRs could move parts. No ABB project of this kind has been announced, so treat it as a possibility rather than a plan.

A worker loads a fixture at a fenced robot cell in ABB's Baden battery plant. Photo: ABB

Fire safety and staffing are the other limits. Maxxen's pre-charging room can be emptied of oxygen within 100 seconds if a cell catches fire, and every new factory needs people who can run lasers, robots and high voltage tests. Smaller plants close to their customers, like Maxxen's, trade some scale for faster delivery: it keeps 200 to 250 MWh of cells in stock and ships by truck across Europe in one to two weeks. Home wall batteries are a much smaller product, and none of these plants has said it will build them.

A Tesvolt battery storage station of 6.24 MWh and 5 MW in Rheineck, Switzerland, 2024. Photo: Kecko / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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