Rivian's Illinois Factory Will Run On Recycled EV Batteries (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0181717058
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/04/15/0712256/rivians-illinois-factory-will-run-on-recycled-ev-batteries
- Source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/rivians-factory-run-own-used-201954613.html
> Rivian is [1]joining with Redwood Materials to reuse EV batteries for energy storage -- the largest repurposed-battery energy storage system for an automotive manufacturer in the U.S., executives told The Wall Street Journal. Redwood Materials is a battery-recycling firm started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. Once completed later this year, Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., will draw electricity from more than 100 Rivian EV batteries in an area the size of a small parking lot. It will reduce Rivian's dependence on the power grid during peak demand hours. "It saves Rivian money on what it takes to run the plant. It reduces the demand on the grid, which is great," Rivian Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in an interview.
>
> In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/rivians-factory-run-own-used-201954613.html
Ask Rivian (Score:2)
Will they have their batteries always connected to the internet like they force us to do with our cars? I think not. Commercial and Industrial applications understand the concept of zero trust security and being able to lock your stuff down and would literally laugh if they were forced to keep it online all the time even when there is no documented need for them to be online, but yet they force owners to trust them (trust is and never should be a security model) and owners should always have the ability to
Who? (Score:2)
Rivian? Is this another AI shoe company?
Re: (Score:2)
They make Amazon vans and EVs for people who have no right to be bitching about the price of gas.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me google that for you: [1]rivian [letmegooglethat.com]
Or wikipedia?
Or just getting it from the context of the summary?
Rivian is an EV company, and unlike a number of vaporware pedlers seeking their next VC round, actually makes and sells vehicles - around 50,000 last year.
[1] https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=rivian
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah, the ones with the ugly headlights? Good for them, I didn't realize they actually sold any.
Bad idea? (Score:1)
If you're thinking that's a fire waiting to happen, it is, but they technically can get a commercial Xray analyzer to check for dendrites and terminal anomalies then cycle the charge once if it looks safe. I'm not aware of a way to spy on the internal chemistry though and you have no idea what temperature they were stored in. So it's still a terrible idea.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you're thinking that's a fire waiting to happen, it is, but they technically can get a commercial Xray analyzer to check for dendrites and terminal anomalies then cycle the charge once if it looks safe. I'm not aware of a way to spy on the internal chemistry though and you have no idea what temperature they were stored in. So it's still a terrible idea.
Lithium batteries have been used in many installations and while they do go up from time to time (It's happened to a couple of Tesla installations), it's
Beyond idiotic (Score:2)
They're effectively running their entire plant but with a 30% bare minimum storage and conversion loss overhead. So they thought this was a good use of money instead of just adding renewables?
Charging Batteries (Score:1)
Don't these batteries have to be charged, which will take electricity from the grid which they could have just used in the first place and not used any batteries at all?
Re:Charging Batteries (Score:4, Informative)
Even when residential and office/retail type businesses pay flat rate, heavy industrial electricity users pay based on time of day. When there's high demand, they can even be cut off (in exchange for getting lower rates the rest of the time). Being able to buffer electricity use allows them to cut costs.
Re: (Score:2)
More likely, the AC oil-burner's too STOOPID to consier that they might charge them with wind turbines. You know, like the turbine farm that runs for TEN MEASURED MILES on I-65 in Indiana.
Re: (Score:2)
The ones that are already supplying that electricity to other customers ... those wind turbines ?
Are you trying to sell the same power twice ?
Re: (Score:3)
Power companies will also bill you a surcharge/Kw/hr based upon your peak energy usage over a 5 or 10 minute window during peak hours - and that surcharge lasts for 6 months or more. One 10 minute burst of power because you started everything up at once can cost you 10's of thousands of dollars more than if you just started up a bit slower. Probably more for a large factory like this.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess it is only for one month but here is the text from their billing statement: Billing Demand: The kW demand to be used for billing purposes each month shall be the highest 15-minute demand during the demand on-peak hours of the current month.
Re: (Score:1)
I see it's to supplement peak hours now.
Re: (Score:1)
No need to attack me.
Re: (Score:3)
I came here thinking the same thing. I see others say it's to offset peak usage hours. But still, the energy conversion needed to charge these batteries would negate the benefit, right? Something does not add up here in my opinion. Sounds like PR nonsense to me at best.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a big fan of using these battery farms to stabilize the grid (voltage and frequency correction, power factor correction). One of the few things that I think that they do well. I would have been much more excited to see, "Company using recycle EV batteries for cheap grid stabilization".
Re: (Score:2)
Please enlighten me AC. Show me your math prowess.
Re: (Score:3)
Sometimes off-peak power can be very cheap. The math usually doesn't work out unless you've found a source of cheap/free batteries, like say, being an EV manufacturer and having access to scrap batteries , or maybe from those rental scooters that are littered all over every major city (don't actually do this).
Re: (Score:2)
Came here to ask exactly this.
Re: (Score:2)
> Came here to ask exactly this.
Even many residential customers can get time-of-use rates these days. You'll almost never see ROI from buying your own bank of batteries, but in climates where the bulk of your electric bill doesn't go towards air conditioning, some people manage to make it work by charging their EV and doing dishes/laundry during off-peak hours - no extra batteries needed.
Re: (Score:2)
> Don't these batteries have to be charged, which will take electricity from the grid which they could have just used in the first place and not used any batteries at all?
They can be charged from the grid, or since most industrial factories have a great wide expanse known as a "rooftop", you could put up solar cells as well which can during the day provide energy to run the factory and charge the batteries.
Putting solar on roofs can generate a surprising amount of electricity especially if you have a lot of i
Re: (Score:2)
" Redwood will turn those into a stationary storage installation that can help reduce Rivian's energy costs during times of peak demand , the companies said in a press release."
from [1]https://insideevs.com/news/792... [insideevs.com]
If power is expensive at peak demand, and cheap (or free) at times with no demand, it makes sense to use batteries to store the cheap energy and use it when energy is expensive
[1] https://insideevs.com/news/792980/rivian-redwood-materials-battery-deal-2026/