Oregon-based energy storage company Powin Energy has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the District Court of New Jersey. The company claims its estimated debts are at least $300 million.
Powin formed in 2010 and operated as a global storage provider, designing everything in the system but the lithium cells. Powin had established contract manufacturing relationships throughout the United States to make the modules, racks and full systems for domestic-content purposes. Some of the largest unpaid creditors Powin listed on its bankruptcy documents are Chinese and Korean battery technology suppliers.
Just one month ago, Powin unveiled a new liquid-cooled battery energy storage system that could deliver 6.26 MWh. Powin deployed its own integrated software suite in its systems called StackOS — which included energy, battery and thermal management systems.
In the bankruptcy filings, Powin revealed its restructuring plan: spinoff its StackOS offering as a new standalone company and sell the rest of its assets. The engineering and installation side of the business was determined to be unsustainable after two large companies canceled their projects.
The company says that there are more than $2 billion of Powin utility-scale BESS deployed in the field, and they depend on the StackOS platform for their continued operation. This equates to over 17 GWh of BESS worldwide that would be unable to operate tomorrow without Powin’s software.
