Richardson Electronics plans to expand commercial-scale battery storage production at its La Fox factory, adding a new grid-storage business to a manufacturer known for vacuum tubes and locomotive parts. Announced October 12, the company plans to build a 5-megawatt storage battery at the site next summer, at an estimated cost of about $3 million.
Richardson says the battery would be the largest ever connected to the grid by an Illinois company, according to the Chicago Tribune. The scale is notable against the state’s existing fleet: Illinois has 102 megawatts, or 0.1 gigawatts, of installed utility-scale battery storage, compared with 18 gigawatts in Texas and 16 gigawatts in California, the Tribune reported. Richardson and its battery-assembly partner, Gotion, start production with 4,500 cells, each about the size of a college textbook. The cells are stacked, welded and sealed with cooling equipment and electronic controls inside a shipping-container-sized metal box.
A Family Company Pivots to Grid-Scale Batteries
Richardson Electronics was founded in 1947 by Arthur Richardson to sell surplus military vacuum tubes to the television and radio industries, and the company remains a family affair — Edward Richardson, now 84, took over in 1974, and his wife Florence worked at the company until age 95, the Tribune reports. Today the diversified power-products manufacturer makes components for synthetic diamond and semiconductor manufacturing and CT medical scanners.
Its existing locomotive battery packs resemble and lay groundwork for utility-scale storage batteries, the company says, and executives are projecting the new business line could be transformative. Scott Dubois, cited in the Tribune's reporting, expects exponential growth in Richardson's battery business.
Tax incentives for renewable power and batteries that support intermittent solar and wind are important to Richardson’s plans, according to the same account. Gotion serves as a battery supplier for Richardson.
Why Illinois Needs So Much More, So Fast
Illinois’ storage buildout is part of a much larger power-system challenge. By 2050, the state will need roughly 50 gigawatts of installed solar and wind capacity to approach its goal of generating electricity only from non-carbon sources. The Tribune’s analysis says about 6 gigawatts of renewable output can currently count as around-the-clock baseload power. Batteries can store electricity generated during the day and supply it later.
The Tribune reports that by 2045, Ameren’s downstate area will need 9 gigawatts of electricity imports from other states. Without more storage, Illinois could rely more heavily on imports and delay planned natural-gas plant closures. The state cannot build new natural-gas plants of its own under clean-air rules, the Tribune reported, meaning Illinois ratepayers could help finance generation in other states through electricity imports.
Matthew Tomc said Illinois already depends on out-of-state resources just to keep the lights on, the Tribune reports. Gil Quinones said widespread customer battery adoption would benefit Illinois, arguing that batteries could increase utilization of the existing grid and put downward pressure on prices.
A Statewide Mandate Is Already in Motion
Some of that buildout is now law. In January, Governor JB Pritzker signed the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, directing the Illinois Power Agency to run competitive procurements aimed at deploying 3,000 megawatts of cumulative grid-scale battery storage capacity by the end of 2030, as Utility Dive reported — a mandate Hoodline covered in a signing-day story. The same legislation lifted a moratorium on large nuclear reactors, according to law firm Quarles & Brady, pairing storage targets with a longer-term bet on nuclear baseload. The Illinois Power Agency has estimated full implementation of the law, including the storage target and new virtual power plant programs, could save Illinois electricity consumers $13.4 billion over 20 years.
ComEd, meanwhile, filed a $15.3 billion, four-year grid plan with the Illinois Commerce Commission in January covering 2028 through 2031, proposing five new substations and distribution upgrades to accommodate data centers, EVs and battery interconnections, a proposal Hoodline detailed in its own coverage of the filing. Consumer advocates have pushed back on the price tag; the Citizens Utility Board has argued the plan includes unnecessary ratepayer costs. Officials said Illinois had developed 6 gigawatts of renewable energy since 2021.
Regional Grid Strain and a Looming 2028 Deadline
Northern Illinois is part of the 13-state PJM Interconnection; the rest of Illinois is served by the Midwest Independent System Operator, which covers Illinois and 14 other states stretching from Mississippi to North Dakota, as well as Manitoba. In July, PJM’s wholesale capacity auction hit its maximum price cap of $325 per megawatt-day for the 2028–2029 delivery year, leaving a 6.8-gigawatt reserve shortfall across the region, Utility Dive reported. The squeeze is driven largely by rising demand from AI data centers and the retirement of older plants. In a worst-case scenario, Pennsylvania regulators have warned PJM could face up to 13 days of service interruptions annually by 2030, compared with the grid operator’s goal of one day every 10 years.
In July 2025, governors from all 13 PJM states, including Pritzker, sent a joint letter calling for grid-operator reforms after capacity-auction prices rose more than 800% year over year, according to The Jersey Vindicator. The Tribune reports that ComEd customers pay an average residential electricity bill of $141 a month, up 4% since 2021, while Ameren customers pay an average of $224, up 51% over five years. Illinois could face shortages beginning in 2029, alongside larger price increases, as electricity capacity needs roughly double by 2050 to meet demand that includes artificial intelligence.
What the storage and demand figures measure
The 102-megawatt Illinois figure cited above measures battery power capacity, not how much energy a system can store or how long it can discharge. The U.S. Energy Information Administration distinguishes power capacity, measured in megawatts, from energy capacity, measured in megawatt-hours. Richardson’s 5-megawatt figure alone therefore does not establish the battery’s discharge duration; the figures cited here also do not provide a comparable national total or a complete planned-capacity tally. The Illinois Power Agency’s procurement page listed an initial event for August 26, 2026, seeking 1,038 megawatts of standalone storage: 450 megawatts in MISO Local Resource Zone 4 and 588 megawatts in the PJM ComEd area. That procurement is one step toward the law’s 3,000-megawatt cumulative target by the end of 2030; the announcement alone does not establish whether Richardson’s project would count toward it.
Planning Documents and Open Fights Ahead
Illinois agencies are set to issue a draft integrated resource plan on November 16, covering electricity demand and generation options including nuclear, fossil-fuel, renewable and geothermal projects, procurement contracts and transmission lines — and potentially efficiency measures like curtailing data-center operations on hot days or paying residents to insulate attics.
For some communities, the prospect of extending fossil-fuel plant life carries real health stakes. Mayra Mendez spent nine years advocating for the 2022 shutdown of an NRG Energy coal plant in downtown Waukegan, at a time when a third of the city's children were suffering from asthma, according to the Tribune. Illinois has also seen calls to set guardrails for data centers and prevent growth from burdening communities, along with support for the POWER Act, which would speed grid connections for data centers that build their own clean power stations.
