12 ms·
Used EV Batteries Could Power Tomorrow's Solar Farms
- VBprogrammer 6y agoI'm not sure how realistic this is on a commercial scale. There are a bunch of people doing this for their own solar offgrid projects, maybe even a few doing it as a cottage industry. However, I can't really see striping, testing and reconfiguring lithium batteries being a big part of future solar farms.
- brianwawok 6y agoIn a few years will be hundreds of thousands of Tesla EV batteries getting to the point they want replaced. If we can find a use for them it’s pretty awesome.
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoTesla has been talking about this for years and I've already read about old ev batteries used for this purpose. So its a good idea.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoTesla's previous CTO, JB Straubel, left to found Redwood Materials. He intends to commercialize recycling of batteries at scale, and the rumor is Tesla will be a customer of the output from Redwood for battery manufacturing. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/tesla-cto-jb-straubel-redwood-materials-recycling-expands-nevada.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/tesla-cto-jb-straubel-redwoo...
- brianwawok 6y agoWould be sweet. Could bring new life (and new range) into a 10 year old car to swap in the battery.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 6y agoI think the problem is mostly logistics. To get good use out of an old array, you have to QA all of the cells and discard the worst ones, because when you wire batteries in sequence (to get higher voltage), then the weakest link effect is very prominent. And if memory serves, to get the most out of a battery array you want to 'match' the cells, so you have to bin the used batteries the same way Intel bins CPUs. If memory serves, you have to charge a battery to measure this, which takes time and therefore space. So to get the cost to be cheaper than just building a new pack (possibly using binned new packs), this all has to be pretty automated. If they bin new cells (if they don't maybe they should!), then most of this hardware would already exist. Which would mean you only need to talk about how to make a robot to desolder battery packs. Given how crap my soldering skills are this feels like a potentially hard or at least expensive problem.
- ecpottinger 6y agoYou don't have to do that to a Tesla battery. The individual cells when they go bad disconnect themselves using a fuse wire. All you have to do is test the pack to see how much power it can store.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoI saw a film about battery recycling recently and the first thing they have to do with incoming cells is discharge them. They were using the energy to power the site. Clearly it wouldn’t be much more work to cycle the batteries.
- hinkley 6y agoI recall something like that too, but they worked it a bit like a counter-flow heat exchanger - drain one batch of cells to charge another.
- xedeon 6y agohttps://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2019-tesla-impact-report.pdf https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2019-tesla-impact-report.pdf Look at the Battery Recycling section.
- mikestew 6y agoBack when Nissan was doing their dog-and-pony show ("come take a test drive!" in a very controlled environment) for the Leaf (2009), that was their exact spiel for what would be done with the batteries when they were past their prime. Now that the early Leafs are at the point of needing new batteries, I'm curious if Nissan is following through (but not curious enough to go looking.)
- ragebol 6y agoWell there you go: https://www.johancruijffarena.nl/default-showon-page/amsterdam-arena-more-energy-efficient-with-battery-storage-.htm https://www.johancruijffarena.nl/default-showon-page/amsterd... (from comment by louwrentius)
- mikestew 6y agoThanks for the link (you, too, louwrentius), I think I might have grown just a little less cynical today.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> Thanks for the link... That is very cool, and that was done during the Ghosn pump/dump era no less; as a long time Nissan enthusiast, which then turned being a technician for Nissan for a period I knew Nissan was involved in tons of new tech: Radar based Cruise control was available back in 2002, CVT transmissions, they were one of the first to adopt throttle by wire, and if you've even been in a GTR its more video game than it was car, especially when it first came out. So these battery's being up-cycled is not so much a surprise, either. I only recently, like a year ago or so, found out they had Aerospace division since 1953 and even had a facility in Mountain View. To think this the same company that was insolvent in the crash of the Japanese Bubble era of the 90s, they really did try to expand into to so many sectors, much like Yamaha, but didn't really get the same notoriety because of it. In fact most non car people, especially in Japan, will recall their real estate holdings collapse alongside the Nikkei index, which was really their core business. It's dark days for Nissan right now, and as a die-hard Nissan fan boy I hope they separate from Renault and make it out of this as their transition to a more EV lineup manufacturer is looking promising, as does their I2V technology but it shows how first-mover advantage can be destroyed from within by short-sighted crooks like Carlos Ghosn (that is a wanted fugitive in Japan after fleeing in some crazy movie-like scenario with ex green berets [1]) and the complicate delivery systems and dealerships that created horrible incentives. 1: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/06/09/former-green-beret-and-son-accused-in-ex-nissan-boss-escape-scheme-fight-extradition/ https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/06/09/former-g...
- Havoc 6y agoPerhaps if the facility is designed with a lot of fault tolerance from the start? Some places aren't short on space so should be fine if you can separate things enough to mitigate fire risk?
- ip26 6y agoThe farm itself probably wouldn't be doing it, but buying from someone who does. I find myself thinking of lead acid battery recycling: https://www.energy-storage.news/news/lead-acid-batteries-are-us-most-recycled-products-trade-group-says https://www.energy-storage.news/news/lead-acid-batteries-are...
- jotm 6y agoWhy not? Refurbishing of household appliances and electronics is a big industry, for example.
- fnord77 6y agoNot sure this will happen if these plans of "1 million mile" EV batteries come to fruition.
- timerol 6y agoIf they are able to be used in cars for a million miles, they will still be able to be used after that at a lower performance. It's likely that a used "million mile" battery will be even more valuable, since it presumably loses performance more slowly than other batteries. So at the point where it's performance drops below "useful in EVs," it will still have a ton of life left before the performance drops below "useful as part of the grid."
- rjmunro 6y agoQuite the opposite. Other parts of the car will wear out at 25% of that (or less), so you'll have second use batteries available with 75% of their life still in them. People won't want to build new cars with old batteries for safety concerns, but if these go into containers in a solar farm in a field somewhere, the risks are far less - you won't stress them as much in regular use, and any emergency will be more contained.
- louwrentius 6y agoThis is done for a soccer stadium in Amsterdam. https://www.johancruijffarena.nl/default-showon-page/amsterdam-arena-more-energy-efficient-with-battery-storage-.htm https://www.johancruijffarena.nl/default-showon-page/amsterd...
- lutostag 6y agoGlad it doesn't go unnoticed, actually was the team lead for that project (Mobility House -- real time battery control). If you have any questions about it or other cool projects we have done -- https://www.mobilityhouse.com/int_en/magazine/press-releases/the-mobility-house-groupe-renault-realizing-first-smart-electric-ecosystem-porto-santo-island.html https://www.mobilityhouse.com/int_en/magazine/press-releases... actually works with the batteries to do the same thing. So we can use them in the car to charge when there is excess renewables, and then use the second-life batteries in large stationary storage installations to do the same. Tying into the different grid systems is a bit of a nightmare with everyone having their own standards unfortunately, otherwise it would be easier to roll these out more often. (I am speaking for myself, not Mobility House).
- microdrum 6y agoWith the new gen of software-defined inverters, this makes more and more sense. The inverter's logic knows RT efficiency, depth of charge, and chemical age of the battery. It changes how it treats each and every battery. Think of batteries like hard drives in a hyperscale datacenter.
- coderintherye 6y agoI was curious about this, anyone else who is curious may find this article of interest: https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/03/smart-inverters-redefine-relationship-ders-grid/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/03/smart-inverter... It's for inverting electricity at grid-scale, not referring to a household "inverter". Still quite interesting.
- microdrum 6y agoThat was interesting. The IQ inverter is for household and small commercial scale. For example, I would happily team with a few neighbors to cache, say 85kWHr at each home.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoThere's no shortage of uses for 'used' ev batteries that outlasted the vehicles they were in. They are quite a valuable commodity already. There's all sorts of things you can do with a good quality battery that is still good for a few tens of kwh of storage. But even when they are still in the car they can be off use to the grid and provide many GW of on demand buffers for both energy shortages and over supply. There recently have been negative energy rates where electricity producers preferred to not shut down expensive to restart plants and instead ended up incentivizing people to charge their car batteries. This doesn't even have to be a huge amount of energy per car. Even a single kwh of capacity per day would quickly add up if there's millions of vehicles plugged into the grid. The same technology can allow the same users to power their house for several days using just a single car and allow them to leverage their own solar panels, get payed to soak up excess grid energy (e.g. at night when wind mills continue producing), deal with grid outages, resell their own solar excess when demand is high, etc. With million mile batteries, people'll be less concerned about breaking their batteries; especially if they get to spend less on electricity. With leased battery business models, this could be simply part of the deal.
- martinald 6y agoThis is becoming more and more common in the UK: https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-london/ https://www.energy-stats.uk/octopus-agile-london/ (these are retail prices anyone in the UK with a smart meter can take advantage of). Basically high wind production with sunlight results in negative pricing. The difference between the 4-8pm "peak" is very high between the rest of the day too. There is an enormous business opportunity here. Prices are going from -3p/kWh to 25p in the same 24 hours nearly weekly.
- kd913 6y agoI wish there were home appliances that could take advantage of this excess supply of electricity. Since 2003 I have been hearing about the concept of the smart grid and yet nothing seems to have particularly materialized. It's 2020, I wish there was a way for me to somehow schedule my washing machines and dishwasher to run easily other the internet at times of negative energy. Heck why isn't this possibility grid controlled yet? Having a large surplus of consumer appliances controlled by the grid could be a greener easier solution than relying on batteries. Alas, I still can't even control my washing machine over the internet. If I could, the appliance is expensive and using proprietary 'dumb' apps.
- mrgzg1 6y agoHaving used one of these used LifePo4 batteries for my van build, https://www.techdirectclub.com/lifepo4-lfp-battery-24-volts-5-63-kwh-220-ah-battery-pack-ev-golf-solar-with-bms/ https://www.techdirectclub.com/lifepo4-lfp-battery-24-volts-... I'm pretty impressed how much bang for buck I can get compared to traditional lead acid batteries. In future build's I'll resort to just using singular Nissan Leaf battery cells, give more configurability + easy to replace just a dysfunctional cell. I see a lot of useful tools on van and boat sites, around managing non traditional batteries and interfacing them with solar panels + engine alternators. Off to a cleaner and decoupled from grid future! Micro grids everywhere.
- belval 6y agoCareful with Leaf batteries, they used air for cooling instead of water which means that most cells show significant capacity loss after a few years.
- epistasis 6y agoIIRC, this is highly dependent on the climate in which they were operated. A battery used in Phoenix may have much bigger problems than one from Pacifica.
- mrgzg1 6y agoIndeed! More than getting ripped off on capacity, I'm super scared of using large capacity lithium batteries in general. Having seen small samsung phones blow up, I'm a little scared and have a lot of fuses and cut off switches.
- belval 6y agoTo be fair, there is no real contest between a good LiFePO4 cell and some Samsung battery as thermal runaway on the former is near impossible in normal conditions.
- outworlder 6y agoClimate and usage dependent. And it's not even a matter of air vs water, is between being actively thermal managed or not.
- zoren 6y agoI thought solar farms produced power.
- djsumdog 6y agoSolar farms still require traditional gas, coal or nuclear plants to provide idle power. Except for certain regions, you can't have consistent solar, and you need to have backup power for brownouts. The idea with better batteries is that solar stations could provide their own excess capacity storage. But battery tech is still not good enough for large scale storage. The break down chemically and are not easy to refurbish. The only real "battery" that sorta works is the Racoon Mountain hydro station, which uses extra electricity to pump water into a resistor and then drains it for power during high peaks. We should be building these all over the country, but they don't really provide that much capacity; plus you kinda destroy the environment around an entire hill and have to build it back up afterwards (Racoon Mtn does have really good mountain biking trails now). But this is just more fluff to green wash technology that really cannot ever truly replace hydrocarbons. We really need to minimize and reduce energy consumption. That's probably never going to happen.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoHigh voltage inter-connectors will help with this. If we wire up the world we won’t need much backup power at all.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWould really love to see HVDC cables laid alongside undersea fiber, saves on deployment costs. Oceanic version of “Dig Once”.
- ben_w 6y agoThey do. But as some people keep complaining, not at night. This can shift the output of a solar farm to when it’s dark. It might not be literal truth, but it’s close enough to be understood — like saying “this food comes from a supermarket” even though the food actually comes from five different farms in different countries.
- djsumdog 6y agoUsed EV batteries could just be used in cars, but Tesla makes it incredibly difficult to fix their crashed vehicles. It's almost impossible for regular consumers to buy OEM parts unless it's for their specific purchased car. This guy has salvaged batteries and tons of other parts from junkyards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAMczraBIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAMczraBIM
- mkchoi212 6y agoThis is something I'm super excited about. People should note that people started trying this out long time ago with batteries from used laptops. I believe couple people were even able to create DIY household energy storage solutions with just old battery laptops! Once the industry figures out the problem of scaling, this could be very impactful.
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoHow recyclable are these newer battery chemistries? I know that lead acid batteries are fairly easy to recycle, but many of these more exotic ones seem harder to recycle.
- TD-Linux 6y agoIt is more complicated because there are more compounds to recover, and the batteries have a finer structure, but you can still do a broadly similar process. Compare lead-acid recycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38 To lithium recycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxCFDWMPu38
- ProZsolt 6y agoBoth link are the same
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y agoUltimately, you can smelt them. It's not very economical, but the elements don't go away. Ideally, you'd be able to 'refresh' the electrode material inexpensively. This involves removing lithium plating from the anode, and oxidized electrolyte from the cathode. This isn't a mature process, and it won't be until battery chemistries and manufacturing get more standardized and scale up. But there aren't strong theoretical reasons why this should be uneconomical. These issues take place at the surface of the electrode grains, and can likely be solved with bulk treatment. It's still going to require a fair amount of work to harvest the electrode material, but materials cost is a large percentage of battery production.
- fomine3 6y agoI'm curious why the refresh process is not popular now.
- dwighttk 6y agoI was sort of hoping the solar farms would produce power...
- gandalfian 6y agoHot potatoe? Last one left holding the battery pays the disposal costs?
- Tade0 6y agoOr sells it off for scrap metal. Metals such as nickel, cobalt, aluminium and copper make up nearly half of the bill of materials in a li-ion cell.
- spiritplumber 6y agoThe humble automotive sealed lead acid battery can also find a second life in a solar setup, be it for a home or a RV. It's a good reuse for truck batteries, I find. Sure SLA batteries are a mess environmentally, but if you can keep them out of the landfill for a few years this way, why not?
- HALtheWise 6y agoMy understanding is that if a lead acid battery ends life in the landfill, somebody has seriously messed up. In the US at least, the vast majority of lead from batteries is recycled, usually into fresh batteries, thanks to financial incentives and a very efficient collection system primarily run by auto parts stores. It's unclear to me whether it's actually more efficient to reuse an old lead acid battery, or to recycle its lead into a modern battery with higher capacity, it probably depends on the specific circumstances.
- spiritplumber 6y agoTrue in the US and Europe, yes. (About 1 on 8 human beings on Earth)
- vondur 6y agoSo how much life is left in a battery? I assumed they are dead.
- adrianN 6y agoMy 11 year old laptop battery still has a third of its capacity left. Car batteries are made to last a long longer than laptop batteries.
- manicdee 6y agoMost Teslas will still have more than 80% capacity after a decade. Chances are the battery is available because the car was written off in an accident, rather than because the batteries are dead.