South Korea’s leading battery maker LG Chem said Wednesday it has inked a deal with North America’s largest power company Duke Energy to build an energy storage system at a retired coal power plant in Ohio.

The company said it would provide the operating system and batteries for the 2-megawatt project at the site of Duke’s closed coal plant in New Richmond by the end of the year. Detailed terms were not disclosed.

PJM Interconnection, which runs the biggest U.S. power market, will use the batteries to help manage the electricity grid in the northeastern region.

“The systems can instantaneously absorb excess energy from the grid or release energy,” said Phil Grigsby, Duke’s vice president of commercial transmission. “Delivering that power in seconds, as opposed to a power plant that could take 10 minutes or more to ramp up, is the unique value the battery system provides.”

LG Chem has expanded its presence in the U.S. energy storage market, which has grown rapidly on the back of government subsidies.

The company entered the market in 2010 by supplying batteries to Southern California Edison, one of the leading electricity suppliers in the U.S.

In 2013, the company supplied batteries for SCE’s wind energy storage project in Tehachapi, California. It also inked a supply deal last year with AES, the largest power producer in the market.

Early this month, the company signed a deal with Gexpro, a leading distributor of electrical supplies, to jointly develop energy storage systems with 45 kilowatts of storage capacity.

“With the new supply deal with Duke Energy, we have paved the way to lead the U.S. energy storage market,” said Kwon Young-soo, battery business chief at LG Chem. “We will become the No. 1 player in the global ESS market.”

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)