Siemens to supply Freyr with digitization technology
Siemens and Freyr Battery are cooperating on sustainable battery production as part of the Siemens Xcelerator open digital business platform. The strategic partnership, announced at Hannover Messe, will see Siemens become Freyr’s preferred supplier of automation and digitalisation technology.
According to the agreement, Freyr will use hardware and software from Siemens’ ‘Industrial Operations X’ portfolio to design and operate its planned gigafactories in Norway and the US. This will enable Freyr to scale production and maximise plant and energy efficiency, according to the Siemens announcement. “Industrial Operations X” is intended to provide “a broad range of products and services for industrial operations to combine operational technology (OT) with integrated information technology (IT)”.
The collaboration spans the entire battery design and manufacturing process – from production design, product design to automation of the entire production process. This concerns the planned Giga Arctic in Norway (production start H1/2024) and the Giga America in Georgia (2025). In total, more than 50 GWh of battery cells are to be produced there in 2025.
For Hannover Messe, Siemens and Nvidia have developed a showcase using digital twins of the Freyr factories to demonstrate how the company can “make better and faster decisions” with the custom Siemens application based on the Nvidia Omniverse platform, according to Siemens. The digital twins were also created using Amazon’s AWS IoT TwinMaker service.
This is not the first contact between the two companies: Earlier this year, Siemens and Freyr had already announced they were forming a strategic coalition with Caterpillar, Glencore and Nidec to help expand sustainable battery solutions in Europe, North America and beyond.
“We are looking forward to leveraging Siemens’ world-leading automation and digitalization expertise coupled with the unique capabilities of AWS and NVIDIA in our battery design and manufacturing processes to meet the growing global battery demand,” said Tom Einar Jensen, co-founder and CEO of Freyr. “AI or digitally enhanced electrochemical cell design and manufacturing processes are the next frontiers in battery production, and this is a fundamental step in this direction.”
“Speed, scale, sustainability: That’s what battery manufacturers need. And this is what our customers get at Siemens better than anywhere else,” says Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO of Digital Industries. “With this partnership, we underscore our position as prime partner to battery manufacturers worldwide.”
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