A second life for EV batteries
Did you know that EV car batteries are often given a new life beyond the car industry? I’m not talking about recycling, which is of course really important, but dismantling, repairing and repurposing EV batteries for a completely different goal.
The environmental and geopolitical impact of battery production is one of the biggest challenges of the EV industry. So it is essential that we will find ways to cleverly redeploy - in a second and even third life - and recycle the millions of used and discarded batteries that will be coming our way in the coming years. McKinsey, for instance, expects some 227GWh of used EV batteries to become available by 2030.
According to Ralph Groen chief commercial officer of Norway-based Evyon, there are three life stages for batteries:
Europe, for instance, has a handful of companies specialising in deploying used EV batteries into stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS), including Connected Energy (UK), Evyon (Norway), BatteryLoop (Sweden), Octave (Belgium), Tricera, encore and Stabl Energy (all Germany).
And there are some really interesting examples out there of battery repurposing:
Nissan has a partnership with Ecobat to recover, repair and repurpose used EV batteries from Nissan LEAFs for second life applications. The batteries come from cars that have been dismantled due to old age or that have been written off by insurers, but of which the batteries themselves still have an opportunity to be reused. After that, they get a second life as, for instance, battery energy storage systems or mobile power charging systems. The Amsterdam Arena in the Netherlands, uses those second-life Nissan LEAF batteries to store energy from solar panels on the roof of the stadium and provide a backup power option in the event of a grid outage.
I once had the pleasure of cruising across lake Como with an electrified ship that used secondhand batteries from BMW i3 cars. The same type of batteries is used in factories as a backup in case of a power outage. While the city of Ostend is building a mini power station based on secondhand car batteries.
Repurposing EV batteries not only extends their useful life by many years but also offers innovative solutions to environmental and energy challenges. It is essential to develop innovative solutions to address the growing challenge of managing the vast number of used car batteries that will accumulate in the coming years.
According to Ralph Groen chief commercial officer of Norway-based Evyon, there are three life stages for batteries:
- You can use a battery at its full state of health for e-mobility.
- Once it’s degraded you could use it for stationary energy storage and squeeze more cycles out of it.
- When its below 70% capacity, you could use it for example for backup power generation/supply.
Europe, for instance, has a handful of companies specialising in deploying used EV batteries into stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS), including Connected Energy (UK), Evyon (Norway), BatteryLoop (Sweden), Octave (Belgium), Tricera, encore and Stabl Energy (all Germany).
And there are some really interesting examples out there of battery repurposing:
Nissan has a partnership with Ecobat to recover, repair and repurpose used EV batteries from Nissan LEAFs for second life applications. The batteries come from cars that have been dismantled due to old age or that have been written off by insurers, but of which the batteries themselves still have an opportunity to be reused. After that, they get a second life as, for instance, battery energy storage systems or mobile power charging systems. The Amsterdam Arena in the Netherlands, uses those second-life Nissan LEAF batteries to store energy from solar panels on the roof of the stadium and provide a backup power option in the event of a grid outage.
I once had the pleasure of cruising across lake Como with an electrified ship that used secondhand batteries from BMW i3 cars. The same type of batteries is used in factories as a backup in case of a power outage. While the city of Ostend is building a mini power station based on secondhand car batteries.
Repurposing EV batteries not only extends their useful life by many years but also offers innovative solutions to environmental and energy challenges. It is essential to develop innovative solutions to address the growing challenge of managing the vast number of used car batteries that will accumulate in the coming years.
