Rep. Welch gets a peek inside KORE Solutions
May 26, 2022 | By Lisa Scagliotti 
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., gets at tour at KORE Solutions with company president Jay Bellows on Monday. Photo by Gordon Miller
The transformation of a former coffee roasting plant and packaging facility to a cutting-edge renewable energy storage manufacturing facility was the backdrop Monday for a visit to Waterbury by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch.
Rep. Peter Welch (left) and Jay Bellows (right) stop during the tour beside a new large Nomad mobile energy storage unit KORE has produced for Green Mountain Power. Photo by Gordon Miller
Vermont’s lone Congressman was home and in the area for stops at what was formerly known as the headquarters of Northern Reliability in Waterbury and later in Bolton for an event with Gov. Phil Scott announcing grants to advance broadband service.
Welch and two staff members met up with Jay Bellows, recently named president of KORE Power, the Idaho-based battery manufacturer that merged with Northern Reliability earlier this year. The Waterbury facility is in the process now of ramping up staffing to add some 50 or more new employees in the coming weeks. New signs with the KORE Solutions company name are on the way as well, Bellows said.
Bellows offered Welch a roughly 45-minute tour of the plant where technicians build units to hold batteries capable of large-scale power storage. They also design and produce the control and monitoring systems.
Combining Northern Reliability’s technology with KORE Power creates an all-U.S. company that can offer customers trustworthy systems to connect to the grid, Bellows explained. The Vermont-based firm started nearly 50 years ago as Northern Power Systems and has grown to now boast customers on all seven continents on the globe including Antarctica. Closer to home the storage systems serve clients as diverse as the King Street Youth Center in Burlington, the Vermont State House and soon, Bellow said, the Pilgrim Park commercial park where the newly named KORE Solutions manufacturing operation is located.
Solar panels are planned for the building roofs in the downtown complex along with battery storage units. The scale will be powerful enough, Bellow said, to serve as emergency power backup for the entire community including the State Office Complex if needed.
Bellows pointed out mobile lithium battery storage units the company is building that can be used temporarily by businesses during peak energy-consumption times of the year. They also are sought by utilities, he said, pointing to a new unit headed to Green Mountain Power.
Welch asked questions and shared that his own home in Norwich now has a Tesla battery wall to store energy and it came in handy recently when they had an outage.
The trends in renewable energy as a power source for everyday uses are creating a growing demand for large-scale storage and transmission that will go far beyond supplying power in emergencies or even just peak periods, Bellows said.
He pointed to electric vehicles as an example and a national goal of eventually replacing 290 million gas-burning vehicles with electric vehicles. Last year, Bellows said, electric vehicles consumed just over 4 trillion kilowatt hours of energy. He said he’s roughly calculated that replacing nearly 300 million gas vehicles will require over 11 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity per day. “We have to make the grid efficient and we have to add storage everywhere,” he said.
Welch also took note of a collection of mountain bikes inside the facility and a basketball hoop against a far wall. Bellows, who coaches boys varsity basketball at Harwood Union High School, said employees enjoy working in Waterbury where they’re close to mountain-biking trails and skiing. They fit recreation into their workday, he said, even if it’s just shooting hoops for a while. Showers are on site as well. “It’s part of the culture,” he said.
Rep. Peter Welch (left) and Jay Bellows (right) stop during the tour beside a new large Nomad mobile energy storage unit KORE has produced for Green Mountain Power. Photo by Gordon Miller
Bellows said he expects the operation will fill out the space it recently moved into. “We projected $30 million in new contracts for this year. We were at $32 million at the end of April,” he said.
KORE shares the former coffee roasting plant facility with neighbors Darn Tough, the sock manufacturer, and the craft beer distributor Vermont Beer Shepherd.
Welch left the visit optimistic about renewable energy as a driver for economic growth and as a path to address shifting away from fossil fuels to combat climate change. “There are so many possibilities if we start to address climate change,” he said. “We can build an economy with good jobs. There are practical ways to do this and they’re happening right here in Waterbury,” he said.