Extending the helpful life of EV batteries mitigates the influence of manufacturing them, mentioned Maria Chavez, power analyst on the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The whole point of trying to deploy electric vehicles is to reduce emissions and reduce the negative impacts of things like manufacturing and extractive processes on our environment and our communities,” Chavez instructed Grist. “By extending the life of a battery, we reduce the need for further exploitation of our natural resources, we reduce the demand for raw materials, and we generally encourage a more sustainable process.”
Just as batteries have grow to be essential to lowering emissions from transportation, they’re additionally wanted to totally notice the advantages of clear power. Without stationary storage, wind and solar energy can solely feed the grid when the wind is blowing or the solar is shining.
“Being able to store it and use it when it’s most needed is a really important way to meet our energy needs,” Chavez mentioned.
The use of 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. Hall mentioned there are already no less than 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV packs sitting round within the United States that could possibly be deployed, and that the amount of them being faraway from automobiles is doubling each two years.
“We’re going from a trickle when we started four years ago to a flood of batteries that are coming,” he mentioned.
B2U says its expertise permits batteries to be repurposed in an almost “plug-and-play fashion.” They don’t want to be disassembled, and items 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 giant cupboards and managed with proprietary software program, which displays their security and discharges and costs every battery primarily based 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 night time, when demand and costs are a lot increased.
Hall 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. Until the recycling trade grows, it’s nonetheless fairly costly to recycle them. By promoting or leasing retired packs to a grid storage firm, mentioned Hall, producers can squeeze extra worth out of them.
That might even assist drive down the fee of electrical automobiles, he added. “The actual cost of leasing a battery on wheels should go down if the full value of the battery is enhanced and reused,” he mentioned. “Everybody wins when we do reuse in a smart fashion.”
B2U expects to add storage to a 3rd photo voltaic facility close to Palmdale subsequent yr. The services are meant to show that the concept works, after which B2U plans to promote its {hardware} and software program to different storage-project builders.
At the second, although, deliberate deployment of the expertise is restricted. B2U predicts solely about 6 p.c of decommissioned EV batteries within the US might be used for grid-scale storage by 2027.
“People are skeptical, and they should be, because it’s hard to do reuse of batteries,” mentioned Hall. “But we’ve got a robust data set that does prove reliability, performance, and profitability. We’re at a point where we really can scale this.”