Used EV car batteries find new life storing solar power in California
- Reference: 1675888211
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/02/08/ev_batteries_solar_storage/
- Source link:
B2U Storage Solutions has reportedly deployed more than 1,300 used EV batteries at a solar facility in Lancaster, California, where it [1]claims it is able to store more than 25 megawatt-hours of electricity, enough to supply power to [2]a couple of hundred homes .
Speaking to Reuters , B2U CEO Freeman Hall [3]said that he believes the project is the first of its kind selling power on the wholesale market, and claimed the company earned $1 million last year from the Lancaster site.
[4]
Even better for offsetting costs, B2U said [5]its technology , which it calls EV Pack Storage (EPS), doesn't require any disassembly or reconfiguration of EV batteries to get them connected to a shipping container-sized climate-controlled storage pod, meaning batteries are essentially plug-and-play, the company claimed. B2U said batteries can be installed using their existing casings, and are managed using their existing onboard management software.
[6]
A B2U EV battery storage container
According to Hall, B2U's system could reduce grid-scale battery capital costs by around 40 percent, saying the batteries included in B2U's system are up to eight years old and mostly come from former Honda and Nissan electric vehicles.
We have to do something with all those batteries
There's no denying it: EVs are here, and they're gradually displacing more gas-powered vehicles. Car companies are [7]already wondering what to do with the batteries no longer suitable for automotive use, which can hit a wall quite early in their life cycle.
According to a [8]recent study that found EV battery addition to the grid could ease renewable transitions, researchers from the Netherlands determined that EV batteries lose their automotive efficacy at around 70-80 percent of their original capacity, at which point they're typically replaced.
[9]Plugging end-of-life EV batteries into the grid could ease renewables transition
[10]BMW updates 90% of EVs sold in the US over power software bug
[11]Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher
[12]Shocker: EV charging infrastructure is seriously insecure
That study also found that plugging old EV batteries into the grid could, along with assistance from vehicle-to-grid equipped cars, add between 32 and 62 terawatt-hours to the grid by 2050 – enough to power a lot more homes.
The paper's authors said "short-term grid storage demand could be met as early as 2030 across most regions," but noted that the study was still a conservative estimate, so the benefits could be even greater.
[13]
And while that recent study was all about attaching EV batteries to the grid, researchers from Utah State University found in 2021 that used EV batteries could be repurposed for [14]off-grid home energy storage as well.
According to their research, using EV batteries as home energy storage could reduce the costs of home solar systems by as much as 50 percent and, more crucially, keep all that valuable lithium and nickel (and toxic battery byproducts) out of landfills.
[15]
But just because they aren't in landfills doesn't mean there's not a risk. Stationary battery problems aren't unheard of, like last year when a Tesla Megapack in California [16]burst into flames after less than six months in operation, and another Tesla battery in Australia spent [17]four days on fire in 2021. Lithium-ion battery packs, the type used in Tesla Megapack batteries, are also used in Toyota and Nissan units repurposed by B2U. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.b2uco.com/
[2] https://www.seia.org/initiatives/whats-megawatt
[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-batteries-getting-second-life-california-power-grid-2023-02-07/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y@QpkEjVNeDeUj5R7C8UhwAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.b2uco.com/technology
[6] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/02/08/b2u-battery-box-in-ca.jpg
[7] https://www.reuters.com/technology/ev-batteries-getting-second-life-california-power-grid-2023-02-07/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/electric_vehicle_batteries_could_help/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/18/electric_vehicle_batteries_could_help/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/09/bmw_ev_update/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/05/ev_deloitte_price/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/15/ev_charging_infrastructure_sandia/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y@QpkEjVNeDeUj5R7C8UhwAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://engineering.usu.edu/news/main-feed/2021/usu-team-named-finalist-in-national-solar-tech-competition
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y@QpkEjVNeDeUj5R7C8UhwAAAIY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/21/tesla_battery_megapack_fire/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/03/tesla_megapack_fire_australia/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: bit of a contradiction
I don't see how this keeps the batteries out of landfills. It just delays them either being trashed or recycled, but it eventually will happen.
Re: bit of a contradiction
Metal recycing is not a one-off event. It's turtles all the way down.
-A.
Re: bit of a contradiction
If the lithium and nickel are valuable (which they are), why would they be in landfill?
Maybe it's only valuable if you have slave labour at your disposal to mine it.
Nobody is going to sift through landfills in the West for $1 a month.
Re: bit of a contradiction
If it's valuable, why would it be in landfill?
-A.
Re: bit of a contradiction
Cheap storage.
Re: bit of a contradiction
Generally speaking, valuable things end up in landfill because the cost of recycling is greater than the value of the extracted materials.
They would never end up in a landfill
Consumers aren't disposing of EV battery packs themselves, that happens in some sort of authorized service center or an automotive junkyard if the vehicle is too old/damaged to get a new battery.
No one is sending entire gasoline powered cars to a landfill, catalytic converter and all. Similarly, no one is going to send battery packs to a landfill so long as it is economic to recycle them for such materials or there are laws similar to the laws regarding disposal of used engine oil that require recycling to recover the useful materials.
Re: They would never end up in a landfill
No one is sending entire gasoline powered cars to a landfill, catalytic converter and all. Similarly, no one is going to send battery packs to a landfill so long as it is economic to recycle them for such materials or there are laws similar to the laws regarding disposal of used engine oil that require recycling to recover the useful materials.
That's the point of scams like this. It just kicks the can down the road. Recyling all the Tesla batteries that have previously been produced is a collosal future cost/liability, especially given battery packs can't currently be recycled back to re-usable elements. So instead the industry promotes scams like this, which pushes the liability for disposal onto ventures like this, and ultimately the sucker at the end of the line who ends up with a pile of unusuable batteries.
This might be a good start
We've been designing batteries to be energy efficient for a hundred years now, a major factor is that this make them easy to sell but a good move in the future would be to build all batteries in a way that would make then easy to recycle or simply just repair and restart as relatively efficient energy storage devices. But if that can't be done then lets just build them in a way that would make them easy to recycle and create new batteries. Look at the world today and think how it might be in a thousand years time - there are a lot of issues that we need to fix if we want to keep humans looking up into the heavens for other alien lives.
Nonstandard units
So it's enough to supply power to a couple of hundred homes . For how long, pray?
Your [1]standards converter provides no answer.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
Re: Nonstandard units
Depends on how much power they can put out. If it's 25MW, they can supply a lot of houses for an hour (somewhere in the region of 7000 I think? I may have a decimal in the wrong place. It's late.), but it's unreasonable to assume they'll put out that much power for that length of time, given the huge strain it would place on the batteries.
They don't provide that information, though. They just give theoretical capacities without context.
bit of a contradiction
"According to their research, using EV batteries as home energy storage could reduce the costs of home solar systems by as much as 50 percent and, more crucially, keep all that valuable lithium and nickel (and toxic battery byproducts) out of landfills."
If the lithium and nickel are valuable (which they are), why would they be in landfill?
Relatedly, is this a better use of those metals than recycling into new vehicle batteries? Alas I studied CS rather than electro-chemistry, but I've always assumed that reduced Li-ion battery capacity is associated with degraded efficiency because of increased resistance at one or both of the anode and cathode.
-A.