There has been a lot said about the EV battery which is a feat of intricate engineering. Thousands of EV battery cells with components sourced from around the world transform lithium and electrons into enough energy to propel the car hundreds of kilometers, again and again, without tailpipe emissions. But when the battery comes to the end of its life, its green benefits fade. If it ends up in a landfill, its cells can release problematic toxins, including heavy metals.
Well, perhaps some of the doomsayers may have to rethink their early predictions. Second-life batteries often consist of electric vehicle batteries that no longer meet the requirements of automotive applications, but are still worthwhile additions as grid-connected energy storage devices.
Second-life EV batteries are being used in pilots around the world to demonstrate their suitability for a wide variety of stationary storage applications. California company B2U Storage Solutions is using repurposed Nissan LEAF batteries in a commercial operation. The company has been bidding into the California power market for over a year, and is earning some respectable revenue, thank you.
B2U’s solar/storage facility is located in Lancaster, California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It consists of a 1 MW solar farm and several small structures, each containing around 20 LEAF batteries, all in their original cases.
The battery array currently offers 4 MWh of storage, and can deliver 2.75 MW of power. The batteries are charged by the solar farm at times when energy prices are low, typically mornings. At peak usage times, when prices climb, the batteries discharge their energy to the grid.
In a recent video from Canary Media, B2U CEO Freeman Hall says his company is making “good money.” In the summer, the facility sells energy for as much as $200 per MWh, and charges the batteries at a cost of about $25/MWh. “Then you have energy sales—as you have intermittency and unexpected price spikes, we can capture that with our trading strategies in the wholesale market,” Hall tells Canary Media. “We also sell capacity into the market and some ancillary services.”
Mr. Hall expects his business model to become more profitable as the supply of used batteries grows, and B2U is already expanding its facility.
And finally, once these batteries come to an end of their second life operations, no doubt technology would have progressed significantly and the battery materials will be recyclable and head to a new product life once again.
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