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Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

volts.wtf

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Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#181
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today you can already get 51.2 V, 16 kWh batteries complete with balancer and BMS from a European supplier for 1200 € (1400 US$): https://www.nkon.nl/novat/nkon-ess-eco-s-51-2v-16-1kwh-thuis...

And the nice thing is, prices will only get lower. They also have a 32.15kWh system for €3500,- which is insane.

Unfortunately, almost all three-phase [1] on-grid inverters that are on the market, especially hybrid inverters, only support batteries with much higher voltages, like 150 V or even more.

[1] Three-phase wiring in homes seems to be very rare in the US, but is extremely common in Europe.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#182

This is less useful than most people expected. Redwood has been struggling because the expected battery turnover is not occurring. EV batteries are lasting a long time, so they stay in the car are and not being recycled or reused in any quantity yet. If EV batteries last 20+ years in EV's, it'll be > 2040 before there are significant numbers of EV batteries available to recycle or reuse. https://www.geotab.com/blog/e…

Top it how cheap batteries have gotten it makes little sense to remanufacture unless you are extremely dedicated DIYer, live somewhere with very cheap labour or it's done in massive scale to achieve economies of scale.

In NZ you can get 60KWh used Tesla battery for 6-10k NZD, then spend another 1-2k for additional gear + labour to hack it (overall $116-200/KWh) or 15KWh for 3.5k ($233/KWh) with warranty and safety guarantees.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#183
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still have mine. Battery capacity is around 80% of the new capacity. I'm not planning on switching anytime soon as it's got plenty of range still. I'll probably swap the pack out when it hits 70% in the next 2 or 3 years.

Your 2018 tesla has a battery SOH of 80%? How many km's on the clock, and how often do you fast charge if you dont mind me asking? To me that SOH stat sounds really bad!

I agree, reads like carefully crafted FUD.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#184
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to my sibling comment: The cost of the panels is a rather small fraction of the total cost of a typical installation. Most of that cost ist labor, some regulatory requirements and the inverter. Whether you pay a factor of 2 for the panels or not typically doesn't matter. In other words: Reusing used panels will only ever be able to safe you a minuscule amount.

Yeah, we paid more for the little bits of metal that held up the panels than for the panels themselves (aluminum, but still).

IDK sounds like you got ripped off. I diy'd and panels were cheap of course, but fittings were perhaps 3-5x cheaper. Inverter is typically same as your panels (hybrid, grid-tied are quite a bit cheaper).

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#185
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the early EV battery life projections were based on Nissan Leaf Gen 1. Which had a horrendous battery pack that combined poor choice of chemistry, aggressive usage and a complete lack of active cooling. When EVs with good battery pack engineering started hitting the streets, they outperformed those early projections by a lot. And by now, it's getting clear that battery pack isn't as much of a concern - with…

I am a bit more concerned about batteries now as opposed to an year ago. We had this article from Elektrek [1] about battery issues in South Korea. When I asked my local electric maintenance shop [2, sorry for the FB link], they said they have started seeing the same issue in Model 3s and Ys in Canada as well. (They also said that it is too early to tell how common it would become) This may bode well for recycling si…

Idk, not really worried about that. There are shops that are able to swap out a faulty module, and the cost is not too horrible:

https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1e3onbp/c...

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#186
post #66

[dead]

How can this be a real issue?

We don't have a lot of car makers and we do not have a huge amount of EV models.

Either you are doing this on small scale, than you can select one or two specific EV models and use these batterie packs or you do it in big scale, than you can also easily adapt the most x batterie packs and only use these across your system.

If you go down to the cell level, its more effort true but then you probably only handel cell types of a handfull of manufacturer again.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#187

> Can "second life" EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage? Yes is it profitable? probably not. Looking at the price for brid battery storage, and its dropping precipitously. The cost isn't as much in the batteries them selves, it packaging, placing and then controlling them. For example if you want to have a 200Mwhr 100Mw storage site, you'll need to place it, join it to the grid, all doable. Then you need t…

'probably not'?

Based on what numbers?

Germany alone had to pay 2 billion in dispatch measures to energy providers. And in the last 6 month we had news about a HUGE request of companies wanting to build grid stabilisation and grid market battery systems in a range of over 100GwH.

Also we do have industries which would be able to save a ton of money if the invest in smaller but similiar systems today already due to energy prices.

And in germany for example, we do have a lot of wind energy in the north but not enough live transit capacity to get it into the south. In this scenario the market would again stabilize the grid by charging at night from cheap / free wind energy production in north and transfering it to the south and then using it at day.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#188
post #42

> but what if they could drain every last drop of energy from those batteries before recycling them? Again batteries are an energy store and not an energy source. The fact the author cannot distinguish that makes the their opinion less credible.

You are just not able to comprehend basic writing styles.

The author is a journalist and not the expert he is interviewing thats the first thing. So why would you even evaluate the journalists 'expertise' if you get the answers from the experts.

And secondly what he probalby meant was that what if this company can 'push out' all active lifecycle before they recycle them.

This is called a metapher.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just sell it though normal channels. If your battery is with more than your car then there would be people making money on the arbitrage.

I totally get that, but as the owner, perhaps I'd like to make the money on the battery before the arbitragers.

You are getting a base price but the rest needs to be enough to motivate people to handle your batterie and to install it somewhere.

You can convert your batterie yourself into a grid support batterie for your own house to maximize your personal gain.

But you are not doing things on scale, so you need to ignore your personal labor time.

Re: Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?

#190

NO! first only if industry and government grow some gonads and fully standardise the cells, and hardware for battery packs to allow for quick and easy dissasembly, testing, repair, and reuse, for off grid, and secondary mobile use, as industry will never trust used components for primary aplications, it is impossible to overstate how allergic industry is to this..... second sodium is comming NOW!, and it is cheaper a…

"NO!" while companies already do this successfully.

But hey, why not being negative first eh? ;P

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