Samsung SDI Sold 1 GWh of US-Made NCA Storage Cells From the Indiana Complex Where It Just Started Making LFP

Samsung SDI signed a 1 GWh supply agreement with Alpha Omega Power on October 26 for storage cells built at StarPlus Energy in Kokomo, Indiana. The chemistry is NCA. Shipments are due before the end of 2026, and the systems are destined for projects in the WECC and ERCOT markets.

The same complex. Samsung SDI began prismatic LFP mass production this month at the Kokomo site, and targets 30 GWh of annual US BESS cell capacity there by year-end. One US complex therefore carries a gigawatt-hour NCA block shipping this year and an LFP line that has just come up.

EnergyTrend counted the Alpha Omega Power agreement inside roughly 2.2 GWh of storage orders booked by four cell makers on October 26, with SVOLT also on the list.

The cathode layer. Intertek CEA’s Q3 2026 ESS Price Forecasting Report, summarized by pv magazine USA on the same day, identifies cathode active material, rather than cell assembly, as the binding constraint for compliance with Section 45X, the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit.

Three South Korean producers, L&F, POSCO and EcoPro, have announced roughly 23 GWh of LFP cathode active material capacity for 2026. Fully built, Intertek puts that at close to 40 percent of US demand.

The consequence Intertek draws from this is a market that separates into pricing tiers defined by tax-credit eligibility.

The price spread. US DC block prices are forecast to fall roughly 15 to 30 percent by 2030. Import markets are expected to fall by more than 40 percent as Chinese manufacturers move to larger-format cells.

Those two numbers moving at different speeds widen the gap between a 45X-eligible system and one assembled from the cheapest available cells. The eligible tier falls more slowly and is worth more on the tax line. A buyer resolves that trade at the moment of contract, often with incomplete information about where the cathode in a given lot originated. That inference is the article’s own, not a finding Intertek publishes.

The Chinese calendar. Three scheduled Chinese tax changes land inside the next fourteen months, each of them raising the landed cost of imported cells.

A 2 percent domestic consumption tax on battery cells took effect in China on September 1, 2026, and the rate doubles to 4 percent on September 1, 2027. At a storage-cell level of roughly RMB 0.36 per Wh for 280Ah and 314Ah formats, the 2 percent rate adds about RMB 0.007 per Wh, per SMM. That stacks on the battery export VAT rebate schedule, which steps the rebate to zero on January 1, 2027. SMM expects a fourth-quarter export rush ahead of that date.

The direction of travel is one-way. Imported cells get more expensive on a published calendar while the domestic tier competes against a falling import benchmark that will itself be re-based by tax.

Slippage. About 11 percent of announced US production capacity could land in 2027 rather than 2026, Intertek estimates. The report does not give reasons for the slippage.

The number matters because announced capacity is the figure buyers plan against. An eleven-point haircut on 2026 availability, applied to a market where chemistry allocation is already decided contract by contract, removes whatever comfort a headline gigawatt-hour total was providing.

Interpretation. Read together, these findings describe a supply picture in which announced gigawatt-hours have stopped functioning as a planning input for buyers. A capacity figure describes a building. The contract decides the chemistry, the cathode provenance, the delivery window and therefore the tax-credit tier that a given lot of cells carries into a project.

Samsung SDI’s Kokomo complex illustrates the point in a single week: NCA cells sold into WECC and ERCOT, LFP mass production newly running at the same site, and a customer who signed early enough to name a volume and a date.

That sequencing favors buyers who can commit gigawatt-hour volumes against a fixed schedule. Utility and independent power producer offtakers can do that. Building-scale commercial buyers, who order in the tens to hundreds of kilowatt-hours and specify a system after a site walk, arrive at the quote and take the tier they are offered. This reading goes beyond what Intertek states.

The federal variable underneath. The material assistance cost ratio for energy storage technology under the foreign entity rules sits at 55 percent for 2026 and steps up in 2027. Treasury’s safe harbor tables remain outstanding, and Novogradac’s analysis of Notice 2026-15 describes interim safe harbors that expire 60 days after those tables publish.

Procurement decisions made in the interval between now and that publication carry a cost ratio nobody can calculate precisely. The step-up arrives on a fixed date; the method for proving compliance against it does not yet exist in final form.

Kokomo will make both chemistries. The order in which its lines get booked is being decided this quarter, in contracts that name a volume, a chemistry and a date, by counterparties large enough to be asked.

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