Taken from Evinfrastructurenews, written by Cameron Murray on the 5th of October
The topic of putting EV batteries into stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS) was discussed on the ‘Second Life Batteries: Unlocking Value Before Recycling’ panel discussion on Day One of Informa’s EV Infrastructure and Energy Summit in London yesterday (1 October).
The panel was preceded by a case study presentation from Pedro Miguel Ferreira, innovation unit manager for energy group Galp on the learnings from a second life BESS deployed in Madrid.
Ferreira’s colleague Carla Tavares, head of renewables and commercial innovation centre, then said on the panel that there was still a lot that was not known about second life projects.
“On the safety side, it raises issues because as an end user we don’t have the knowledge to look inside the batteries that we are reusing. That’s why we count on companies that do the repurposing and packaging,” she said.
“Furthermore, from our experience in deploying second life BESS at scale, it raises a lot of concerns in terms of safety and in terms of how many years I can consider in my Excel spreadsheet when I’m buying second life batteries? We don’t know yet. It could be five, it could be seven, it could be 10. And it makes a lot of difference, especially when we now have price parity between new ones and second life ones.”
The price parity is because the price of new lithium-ion, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery modules has fallen sharply over the past 2-3 years, reducing the business case of using second life ones. Second life might still be cheaper at point of sale, but it has extra costs of disassembly, triage, testing and re-assembly that new ones don’t.
Dr. Amrit Chandan, CEO of manufacturing digitisation platform Lorefully, gave an example of how those extra costs associated with second life work in practice: “One OEM said that if you want a battery pack from us, it’s easier for us to send you the whole vehicle rather than just the pack, because it’s a different classification, which makes it easier.”
Matthew Lumsden, CEO of second life BESS technology firm Connected Energy, said that to ensure safety the company would only use battery packs if its manufacturing OEM works with Connected on it.
“They have to share the data which enables us to control the battery pack efficiently, but also they share the parameters which you know they regard as being safe within which we have to operate the pack. So we use all of the existing safety systems that the OEM has put into the battery management system on the pack, then we have our additional safety systems on top of that.”
He explained that, in addition to taking batteries from EV fleets, you can use the operators’ data on how the batteries were used.
“So if you can start to remove the cost of double handling and testing and rely on the data that comes out of the vehicles, then you’re starting to really improve the economics of second life. That history is really important.”
In a similar vein, there is an increasing amount of batteries at low cost available from vehicle disassemblers but the lack of data on those batteries means Connected doesn’t work with them yet, but is exploring ways to do so safely.
On price, moderator Roger Morton, managing director for technology and innovation at recycler EMR, said that ultimately the cost-competitiveness of second life batteries should increase just by sheer market forces.
“You can see the enormous growth coming in the next five or six, maybe 10 years. We’re still at the learning stage. As the volumes grow and as everyone’s knowledge grows, then second life packs will become competitive with new ones even as the cost of the new packs drops,” he said.
“As people start to get more concerned about their CO2 impact, that may well drive further change, and also the issues around availability of critical raw materials may also encourage more second life use.”