the growth of EV sales has started to provide a steady supply of high quality batteries that are suitable for grid storage duty. “We’re in the early days of the end-of-life EV batteries being available but there has been a steady stream of those batteries becoming available.”
To save on costs, B2U uses complete battery packs rather than removing the cells and installing them in a new housing. To do so, it has had to build a translation layer that sits between the software that manages the storage facility and the battery management system on the battery. That layer controls charging and discharging and helps monitor the health of individual batteries.
Understanding how a battery’s capacity has declined is essential for the facility’s operation. Hall said that, during charging, the company’s software has to recognize when an individual pack has reached its capacity and tell it to disconnect at that point to allow the stronger batteries to continue charging.
But even second life batteries reach a point where they can no longer handle grid storage duty. “We’re definitely working with OEMs and with the recyclers to make sure that that life-cycle management activity is handled properly,” Hall said. “Reuse needs to be fitting hand in glove with the recycling so that it’s all handled very effectively.”Managing the production and end of useful life procedures for EV batteries presents plenty of challenges.
What is Second Life ?