Enerblu experiencing delays in Pike

Enerblu President and CEO Daniel Elliott spoke at the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce luncheon last week with a promise “to speak candidly” about the work being done to bring a 1 million square foot manufacturing facility to the Kentucky Enterprise Industrial Park in Pikeville.

Elliott told the chamber the construction of the facility “is a lot harder than we thought,” and said the facility is the hardest thing he has ever done.

“Hindsight being 20-20, this is a lot harder than we thought,” Elliott said. “We set out to build a very large facility at Marion Branch. When we first talked to the city, we understood this land to be very beautiful and to a degree, it is. What we didn’t realize, and in going through this process now, with the geotechnical work — this last year has been an eye-opener.”

Elliott said the land is buildable for “smaller, individual facilities,” citing that “SilverLiner is building a very beautiful facility up there.”

“When we are trying to lay out a building that is approximately 1.5 million square feet, roughly. The dirt, I look at it and see a nice piece of land, but what is underneath it, … we discovered that well, over here it is 70 feet deep, over here it is 40 feet deep and over here it is 400 feet deep,” Elliott said. “The engineers, they told us, ‘Well if you build on this land, the building is going to crack into three pieces, like the Titanic.’”

Elliott said he told the engineers that he wanted to build at Marion Branch, and that, “in today’s modern world, there has to be a way to build here.”

“They said, ‘Well you can drive pylons down 450 feet.’ No, we can’t. I mean yes, we can, but financially, no, we can’t,” Elliott said. “So we are trying to figure that out. Are we saying that we are not going to be building up there? I am not saying that. I don’t know what we are going to do yet, we are trying to figure that out. What we found is that, putting the building there would cost us $30 million in soil work. That is before we get to the building.”

Elliott said the project “could not stomach” $30 million for soil work.

“We are looking at all options. There are all sorts of things being discussed. We are dealing with companies right here in Eastern Kentucky that have built on these types of soils. First, we started with people who hadn’t and they don’t know,” Elliott said.

Additional problems

He said the problems facing the construction in Eastern Kentucky is the hardest thing he has ever done. Elliott is the former president and CEO of a technological startup in China, but the problems facing the construction in Eastern Kentucky are more difficult.

“It was strange to have an American run a Chinese company, but I did. I left to come back to the United States to do (Enerblu). I thought doing business in China would be the hardest thing I ever did,” Elliott said. “It turns out that doing that here is the hardest thing I have ever done.”

Elliott said while in China, he saw “a lot of, what we would call, corruption,” but that government entities, from “the local community, their city, their county, their province, the federal … central government in Beijing … were all in alignment.”

“Not everything here is in alignment. Even when the government is operating, there are all sorts of different factions and arguments and things that go on,” he said. “I didn’t even speak the language (in China) and was able to build a facility in three years, because they were all lined up. They were all in agreement and that is not what we find here.”

With some of the problems facing the company, Elliott said the decision had been made to move forward with a smaller building, 60,000 square feet, to produce the cells in Lexington, before moving those cells to Pikeville, and begin training and production in Lexington.

“Well, the government shut down. I can’t even get permits. We were supposed to get the permits in November, but that got delayed and then we heard February. Now, I have no idea because I don’t know when the government is going to get back to work,” Elliott said. “It is what it is. Now we are being told maybe April, if the government starts back up.”

Elliott said that despite the setbacks, “we are in this and we are trying like hell.”

“I love the area, I relocated my family from Southern California and the only reason I live in Lexington is because I need an airport. Unfortunately, I don’t have a private jet,” Elliott said. 

He said he anticipates completion to be delayed until at least 2021.

“We are working hard to do this. One thing that would help is to get more local investment in our project. The big banks, like in New York, they go, ‘Oh, the local investors, community is putting in,’ then they feel better about it,” Elliott said.

A needed, unique technology

Elliott said the technology and lithium titanate batteries which Enerblu plans to manufacture would be high-cycle batteries which can operate in extreme temperatures, with a focus on high heat areas.

“These batteries last an extremely long time in term of cycles — charging and discharging. They also work in extreme temperature ranges. You could take them out into the desert of Arizona and they will work. You can take it out (in freezing temperatures) and it will work,” Elliott said.

He said the batteries to be manufactured are made for “power grid-type applications, military application, server farms, trucks and buses.” 

“(This is) something that is going to sit out in a field for the next 30 years … and it’s going to do its job. It is going to do a job and no one has to come out and service it, babysit it, take care of it,” Elliott said. 

He said Enerblu is currently targeting high-heat areas of the world, because that is where human populations tend to gather and live.

“Two-thirds of the world’s population lives where it is hot. Countries like India, think about South America, these are places that cannot afford to have battery tech that won’t function in extreme temperatures,” Elliott said. “I spent time in India and North Africa (in 2018). There are more than 300 million people in India without electricity. If you don’t have electricity, you have diseases, you don’t have education, you don’t have healthcare, you don’t have clean drinking water.”

Elliott said that is the technology that is going to be produced.

By Chase Ellis
Appalachian News-Express