Extending the helpful lifetime of EV batteries mitigates the affect of producing them, mentioned Maria Chavez, vitality analyst on the Union of Involved Scientists.
“The entire level of making an attempt to deploy electrical autos is to scale back emissions and scale back the adverse impacts of issues like manufacturing and extractive processes on the environment and our communities,” Chavez advised Grist. “By extending the lifetime of a battery, we scale back the necessity for additional exploitation of our pure sources, we scale back the demand for uncooked supplies, and we typically encourage a extra sustainable course of.”
Simply as batteries have turn out to be essential to decreasing emissions from transportation, they’re additionally wanted to totally understand the advantages of fresh vitality. With out stationary storage, wind and solar energy can solely feed the grid when the wind is blowing or the solar is shining.
“With the ability to retailer it and use it when it’s most wanted is a extremely vital option to meet our vitality wants,” Chavez mentioned.
Using utility-scale battery storage is anticipated to skyrocket, from 1.5 gigawatts of capability in 2020 to 30 gigawatts by 2025. EV packs might present a stockpile for that buildout. Corridor mentioned there are already at the very least 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV packs sitting round in the US that might be deployed, and that the quantity of them being faraway from vehicles is doubling each two years.
“We’re going from a trickle once we began 4 years in the past to a flood of batteries which can be coming,” he mentioned.
B2U says its expertise permits batteries to be repurposed in a virtually “plug-and-play style.” They don’t must be disassembled, and models from a number of producers—B2U has examined batteries from Honda, Nissan, Tesla, GM, and Ford—can be utilized in a single system.
The packs are saved in massive cupboards and managed with proprietary software program, which screens their security and discharges and fees every battery based mostly on its capability. The batteries cost through the day from each the photo voltaic panels and the grid. Then B2U sells that energy to utilities at evening, when demand and costs are a lot greater.
Corridor mentioned utilizing second-life batteries earns the identical monetary return as new grid-scale batteries at half the preliminary price, and that for now, repurposing the packs is extra profitable for automakers than sending them straight to recyclers. Till the recycling business grows, it’s nonetheless fairly costly to recycle them. By promoting or leasing retired packs to a grid storage firm, mentioned Corridor, producers can squeeze extra worth out of them.
That might even assist drive down the price of electrical autos, he added. “The precise price of leasing a battery on wheels ought to go down if the complete worth of the battery is enhanced and reused,” he mentioned. “All people wins once we do reuse in a sensible style.”
B2U expects so as to add storage to a 3rd photo voltaic facility close to Palmdale subsequent yr. The amenities are supposed to show that the concept works, after which B2U plans to promote its {hardware} and software program to different storage-project builders.
For the time being, although, deliberate deployment of the expertise is restricted. B2U predicts solely about 6 % of decommissioned EV batteries within the US will likely be used for grid-scale storage by 2027.
“Persons are skeptical, and they need to be, as a result of it’s laborious to do reuse of batteries,” mentioned Corridor. “However we’ve bought a sturdy information set that does show reliability, efficiency, and profitability. We’re at some extent the place we actually can scale this.”
