![]() A growing domestic recycling industry, supported by billions of dollars in loans from the Energy Department and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, is being built to prepare for what will one day be tens of millions of retired EV battery packs.īefore they are disassembled, however, studies show that around three quarters of decommissioned packs are suitable for a second life as stationary storage. Almost all of the critical materials inside them, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are reusable. The Cuyama facility includes 1.5MW of solar power and 12MWh of storage utilizing second-life Honda EV batteries.Įlectric vehicle batteries are typically replaced when they reach 70 to 80 percent of their capacity, largely because the range they provide at that point begins to dwindle. ![]() Doing so could increase the sustainability of the technology’s supply chain and reduce the need to mine critical minerals, while providing a cheaper way of building out grid-scale storage. The facilities are meant to prove the feasibility of giving EV batteries a second life as stationary storage before they are recycled. Its first facility, just outside Los Angeles, uses 1,300 retired batteries from Honda Clarity and Nissan Leaf EVs to store 28 megawatt-hours of power, enough to power about 9,500 homes. The SEPV Cuyama facility, located about two hours northeast of Santa Barbara, is the second hybrid storage facility opened by B2U Storage Solutions. But one thing about the Cuyama facility, which began operations this week, is less common: The batteries sending energy to the grid once powered electric vehicles. To make renewable energy from intermittent sources like solar and wind available when it is most needed, it’s becoming more common to use batteries to store the power as it’s generated and transmit it later. ![]() At night, when energy demand rises, that electricity is sent to the grid to power homes with clean energy. ![]() On a 20-acre parcel outside the tiny Southern California town of New Cuyama, a 1.5-megawatt solar farm uses the sun’s rays to slowly charge nearly 600 batteries in nearby cabinets. ![]()
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