Fluence to Supply U.S.-Made Batteries and Build Avantus’s 800 MWh Rexford 2 Storage Project in California
- Energy Storage News Solar + Storage Integration
Marin Holt
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- 5 minutes read
- System Size: 200 MW / 800 MWh
- Duration: 4-hour
- Location: Tulare County, California
- Homes Powered: 84,000
- Peak Construction Jobs: 500+
Fluence agreed to supply a 200 MW / 800 MWh battery system and provide turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction for Avantus’s Rexford 2 project in Tulare County, California, the two companies said on July 13, 2026. The 4-hour system will draw battery cells, modules, enclosures, and thermal-management hardware from U.S. factories in Utah, South Carolina, and Texas, giving the project domestic-content sourcing that qualifies for federal clean-energy tax incentives.
The Agreement
Fluence will deploy its Smartstack product, a 4-hour-duration storage platform, and act as the single EPC contractor responsible for design, procurement, and construction of a ready-to-run facility. Rexford 2 pairs the 800 MWh battery with a co-located solar farm. Construction is scheduled to start in 2027, with commercial operation targeted for late 2028. Once running, the site is sized to deliver firm, on-demand capacity equal to the needs of about 84,000 Southern California homes.
Made in the U.S.
Domestic-content sourcing is what separates this contract from a standard storage award. Fluence routes cell, module, enclosure, and thermal-management production through partner plants in Utah, South Carolina, and Texas rather than importing finished systems. John Zahurancik, Fluence’s chief customer success officer, tied the domestic approach to long-term project performance, and Avantus sourcing executive Tony Frontino framed it as delivering affordable, reliable clean energy at scale with the right partners. Avantus separately signed an offtake agreement with Clean Power Alliance, a California community-choice aggregator, to buy the project’s output.
Critical Perspective
Fluence’s 200 MW / 800 MWh Rexford 2 order routes battery cells, modules, and enclosures through plants in Utah, South Carolina, and Texas to qualify for the federal domestic-content bonus. Cells assembled on American soil still lean on cathode active material and graphite anodes processed almost entirely in China, the upstream steps the domestic-content accounting can quietly pass through. Tesla’s Megafactory in Lathrop, California assembles grid-scale Megapacks domestically yet has drawn its LFP cells from CATL, showing how a domestic-content label can rest on imported chemistry. If Treasury’s 40 percent domestic-cost test is met on assembly rather than the cell supply chain, how durable is the bonus that anchors this project’s tax-credit math?
Why It Matters
Developers building storage in the United States have leaned on imported battery cells, exposing projects to tariff swings and shifting trade rules. A domestic supply chain locks in eligibility for the domestic-content bonus under federal clean-energy credits and shields the construction budget from border risk. For California, the 200 MW block adds four hours of dispatchable capacity in a market that increasingly depends on batteries to cover the evening ramp after solar output falls. The project is also expected to support more than 500 union jobs at peak construction and hundreds of millions of dollars in local tax revenue for Tulare County.
Sources
- GlobeNewswire – Fluence to Provide U.S. Domestic Content Smartstack System for Avantus 800 MWh Rexford 2 Project (July 13, 2026)
- StockTitan – Fluence wins 800 MWh Rexford 2 storage EPC deal
- Energy-Storage.News – Fluence talks up US domestic content strategy
- Energy Global – Avantus and Clean Power Alliance sign agreement to deliver clean energy to California (July 14, 2026)
