Sungrow buys Samsung SDI cells to keep US storage sales
Nikita LutsenkoFounder & CEO, SOLTECH
Sungrow will buy Samsung SDI LFP cells for its storage systems, a reported 3-year multi-GWh deal, as US rules split China-linked battery supply chains.
Sungrow will buy Samsung SDI battery cells for its own energy storage systems, mainly to keep serving the United States, a person familiar with the matter told ESS News on 9 September 2026. South Korean reporting points to a three-year deal worth trillions of won, supplying several gigawatt-hours a year. Volumes, pricing and manufacturing locations were not disclosed, and neither company commented.
What is confirmed about the Sungrow Samsung SDI battery cell deal
| Parameter | Value | Source |
| Buyer | Sungrow, Chinese inverter and energy storage supplier | ESS News, 9 Sep 2026 |
| Supplier | Samsung SDI, South Korea | ESS News, 9 Sep 2026 |
| Cell chemistry | Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) | The Elec, via ESS News |
| Reported term | Three years | The Elec, via ESS News |
| Reported annual volume | Several GWh per year | The Elec, via ESS News |
| Reported contract value | Trillions of Korean won | The Elec, via ESS News |
| Primary purpose | Maintain supply to the US storage market | ESS News, 9 Sep 2026 |
| Candidate production site | StarPlus Energy, Indiana (Samsung SDI and Stellantis JV) | ESS News, 9 Sep 2026 |
| Prismatic LFP mass production there | From Q4 2026 | Samsung SDI, via ESS News |
| Cathode supply behind it | KRW 1.6 trillion (US$1.1bn) of LFP cathode material from L&F over three years, from 2027 | ESS News, 9 Sep 2026 |
| Not disclosed | Volume, value, schedule, assembly location, compliance route | Both companies declined to comment |
The gap in that table is the interesting part. A supply deal this size normally comes with a press release. This one arrived through a source and a Korean trade paper, which is what happens when the commercial terms are less sensitive than the compliance question sitting underneath them.
Why a Chinese supplier is buying Korean cells
US rules restricting China-linked battery components and equipment are forcing storage suppliers to rebuild their bills of materials. Sungrow has said publicly it has no plan to build manufacturing in the United States, while seeking deeper cooperation with overseas companies on components and services. Buying cells made outside China, potentially inside the United States, is the cheapest available route to a saleable product.
It is not an isolated move. On 1 September 2026, SK On signed a five-year reciprocal deal to supply NeoVolta Power with 9 GWh of LFP pouch cells from its US plants, part of an 18 GWh arrangement. Two Korean cell makers, two Chinese-exposed customers, four weeks apart. The pattern is a supply chain splitting into a US-compliant lane and a rest-of-world lane, priced differently.
What the split does to cell economics
Korean LFP cells made in the United States will not match Chinese cell prices. Chinese 314Ah storage cells traded around RMB 0.38/Wh (roughly US$0.053/Wh) in mid-2026 according to Gaogong Storage, and even after the September 2026 consumption tax increases they remain the global price floor. A US-made prismatic LFP cell carries higher labour, higher capital cost per gigawatt-hour and a shorter production history.
The buyer of a US project pays that difference. The buyer of a Gulf project does not — but shares a supplier whose engineering, cell allocation and warranty reserves are now split across two incompatible product families.
The SOLTECH view
Our position: this is a lead-time and product-continuity story for the Gulf, not a price story, and treating it as a price story will cost someone a schedule.
- For a villa owner in the UAE: nothing changes. Residential battery sizing, DEWA tariff economics and the payback on a rooftop system are untouched by US grid-equipment rules. Anyone quoting you a higher price and citing "US restrictions" is quoting you a higher price.
- For an EPC contractor: the practical risk is a mid-project cell or firmware revision. When a supplier runs two cell sources, product codes churn — and a replacement module that is electrically equivalent but not identical is a commissioning problem, not a procurement one. Fix the exact cell model and firmware baseline in the purchase order, and get spares from the same production batch. Confirm the model against DEWA's eligible equipment list before the order, not after.
- For an investor: single-supplier exposure just got more expensive to model. A supplier that redirects capacity to a regulated market can deprioritise yours without breaching anything. For any Gulf BESS above roughly 10 MWh, we would want a named second source qualified before financial close, and a service obligation that survives a change of cell vendor.
Where we disagree with the framing: several write-ups present this as Sungrow "diversifying" its supply chain, which reads as strength. It is closer to the opposite. A company that publicly rules out US manufacturing and then buys another firm's cells to stay in that market is managing an exclusion, not building an advantage. Being honest about that matters, because the same logic could one day apply to a Gulf procurement rule — and the question a UAE buyer should be asking is not whether Sungrow can serve America, but what its second source looks like here.
Caveat we will not paper over: the volume, value and manufacturing location are unconfirmed, and the customer in the original Korean report was unnamed. Everything above rests on one sourced confirmation. If Samsung SDI supplies from Korea rather than Indiana, the US-compliance logic weakens considerably and this becomes a much more ordinary purchase.
Sources: ESS News — Exclusive: Sungrow turns to Samsung SDI cells to sustain its energy storage business, 9 September 2026, pv magazine — Sungrow turns to Samsung SDI battery cells, 9 September 2026, Energy-Storage.News — SK On signs 18GWh reciprocal LFP supply deal with NeoVolta Power, 1 September 2026.