‘It Feels Like Home’: Steel’s Heritage Lives At Form Energy Weirton Site

Dot Gilliam coordinates the installation of equipment at Form’s Factory One in Weirton.

Long before this gleaming, 500,000 square foot factory went up, the site churned out steel products for generations, and Gilliam’s family was part of it.

“My grandfather worked here. His dad worked here. My dad worked here,” Gilliam said. “I have many cousins, uncles.”

Thousands of workers labored around the clock at Weirton Steel. Production waned and employment dropped as steel production moved overseas. The plant closed.

Form Energy chose the site for its first factory for storage batteries. They’re the kind that can take electricity generated by wind and solar – really, any source – and store it for days until it is needed on the grid.

For Gilliam, it was a chance to continue in his family’s footsteps.

“When I heard about Form coming in, I really saw this opportunity to work here on the same property my family all came from,” he said. “And it feels like home.”

The Form factory bears little resemblance to the steel mill. Weirton Steel was hot, noisy and dirty. Form’s factory is air conditioned, clean and relatively quiet.

Robots do a lot of the physical labor of building the batteries. The plant has about 250 workers now and is projected to have as many as 700, nowhere close to full employment at the steel mill.

Still, Gilliam thinks the same motivation drives Form’s workers as did the steel mill’s workers. 

“The heritage is still here,” he said. “It took a lot of grit to get Weirton Steel going. And now we’ve got Form here and use that same grit to get this going.”

Instead of steel for bridges, buildings and battleships, Gilliam and his co-workers are building another kind of American power.