NC ends incentives for power tech firm and battery maker that planned Triangle-area jobs
The North Carolina Department of Commerce withdrew a pair of corporate incentives Tuesday for clean energy projects that together promised 380 new jobs in the greater Triangle.
One of the incentives was a 2021 job development investment grant to the technology firm Smart Wires, which works with electric utilities to improve power grids. Under the deal, Smart Wires would relocate its headquarters from California’s Bay Area to Durham and hire 250 workers locally at an average annual salary of around $118,000. It pledged to invest $21 million in this new office.
While Smart Wires did move its headquarters to an office park near Research Triangle Park, it has since reported several setbacks. In 2022, the company laid off 35% of its workforce and delisted from the NASDAQ, according to a corporate report. Citing “continued supply chain challenges,” the company suspended its revenue guidance and announced it would explore a sale, merger, or additional job cuts. The next year, its CEO Pete Wells left the company.
Smart Wires did not respond to questions from The News & Observer about its current headcount or future in the Triangle.
The N.C. Economic Investment Committee canceled the grant after Smart Wires failed to file hiring and investment updates. Companies that know they won’t meet their grant terms often preemptively write to the state commerce department to ask that they be let out of their commitments. Smart Wires did not provide a termination request to the state, the commerce department says.
Smart Wires received no state money through its 2021 grant. The company was eligible to get $2.8 million in payroll tax benefits had it met job creation and investment targets.
Mebane incentive terminated
The second clean energy project to have its North Carolina incentive pulled this week was a $40 million battery facility in the town of Mebane from the manufacturer Sunlight Batteries USA. Under a 2022 job development investment grant, or JDIG, Sunlight would create 133 jobs at a new 134,000-square-foot facility on the Alamance County side of Mebane, which straddles both Alamance and Orange counties.
Sunlight Batteries is a subsidiary of the Sunlight Group, which is headquartered in Athens, Greece. The company operates an existing battery facility in Greensboro and looked to use the Mebane plant to assemble lithium-ion batteries.
“Demand is growing for clean energy components like batteries, and North Carolina is at the forefront of this industry of the future,” then-Gov. Roy Cooper said in a 2022 statement celebrating Sunlight’s expansion announcement.
Similar to the Smart Wires grant, the Economic Investment Committee ended Sunlight’s incentive on Tuesday after the company did not provide hiring or investment updates by a required deadline. Neither did Sunlight write a termination request letter or respond to questions from The N&O about the reasons behind its failure to file.
Lithium prices have fallen since 2022 due to higher supply and slowing electric vehicle demand. Some predict the global market will stay oversupplied for three more years.
Most JDIGs historically haven’t met their original job targets. Since the job grant program started in 2003, early-terminated grants have outnumbered completed grants by more than 3-to-1. An N&O analysis found that the majority of awarded JDIGs eventually ended prematurely in every year between 2003 and 2015, except for one.
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 3:13 PM with the headline "NC ends incentives for power tech firm and battery maker that planned Triangle-area jobs."
