extend EV battery service life Maria Chavez, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said it would reduce the impact of manufacturing.
“The whole point of trying to introduce electric vehicles is to reduce emissions and reduce the negative impacts of things like manufacturing and extraction processes on the environment and communities,” Chavez told Grist. “Increasing battery life reduces the need to use more natural resources, reduces demand for raw materials and generally encourages more sustainable processes.”
Just as batteries have become essential to reducing transportation emissions, they are also needed to maximize the benefits of clean energy. Without stationary storage, wind and solar power can only provide power when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
“Being able to store energy and use it when we need it most is a very important way to meet our energy needs,” Chavez said.
The use of utility-scale battery storage is expected to increase rapidlyFrom 1.5 gigawatts of capacity in 2020 to 30 gigawatts by 2025. EV packs could become a stockpile for that augmentation. Hall said there are already at least 3 gigawatt-hours of used EV packs in the U.S., and the amount removed from cars is doubling every two years.
“We’re moving from just a few batteries when we started four years ago to a place where we’re going to have a lot of batteries,” he said.
B2U says its technology allows batteries to be reused in an almost “plug-and-play” manner. No disassembly is required, and B2U allows him to use units from multiple manufacturers in one system, having tested batteries from Honda, Nissan, Tesla, GM, and Ford.
The packs are stored in large cabinets and managed with proprietary software that monitors safety and discharges and charges each battery based on capacity. The battery is charged during the day from both solar panels and the grid. B2U then sells that power to the utility at night, when demand and prices are much higher.
Hall said used batteries offer the same economic benefits as new grid-scale batteries for half the initial cost, and are currently a good option for automakers to reuse rather than send the packs directly to recyclers. He said it would be more profitable. Until the recycling industry grows, recycling will still be quite expensive. By selling or leasing used packs to grid storage companies, manufacturers can squeeze even more value out of them, Hall said.
This could also help reduce the cost of electric vehicles, he added. “If we maximize the value of the batteries and reuse them, the actual cost of leasing wheel batteries should come down,” he said. “If we can reuse it in a smart way, everyone can benefit.”
B2U plans to add storage next year to its third solar farm near Palmdale. The facility is intended to prove the idea works, after which B2U plans to sell the hardware and software to other storage project developers.
However, at this time, planned deployment of this technology is limited. B2U projects that only about 6% of retired EV batteries in the U.S. will be used for grid-scale storage by 2027.
“People are skeptical, and they should be, because it’s difficult to reuse batteries,” Hall said. “But we have a robust data set that proves reliability, performance and profitability. We’re at a stage where we can really scale this.”
