|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Sat, 30th May 2020 12:57:00 |
|
Old EV Batteries Could Hold The Key To Solving The Energy Industry's Biggest Pro |
Here's a fact you don't often hear: electric cars are a tiny portion of the global market. "Tiny" here means 0.5 percent of all cars on the world's roads. In absolute numbers, however, this "tiny" portion translates into millions of EVs, and this number is growing. But what do we do with all those batteries when they're done with them?
The idea of giving EV batteries a second life rather than recycling them has been around for a while. The most obvious direction for this second life is energy storage. After all, this is what rechargeable batteries do: they store energy for when it is needed. And they need to be replaced in an EV long before they are completely exhausted. In fact, EV batteries are considered to be at the end of their productive life for a car when it falls to 80 percent of their original capacity, which is still plenty of capacity that could be repurposed.
Perhaps the first thing that springs to mind here would be behind-the-meter storage—the kind of storage system you can put in your house to reduce your reliance on the grid. But there is also another option: using EV batteries for utility-scale energy storage.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently published a study of the feasibility of a utility-scale solar farm combined with a storage system made from used EV batteries. What they found was that this could be a better choice than building a new energy storage system.
The study involved looking into three scenarios: building a 2.5-MW solar farm with no storage system, the same farm but with new storage, and the same farm with a storage system from reused EV batteries. Their findings showed that the energy storage system using EV batteries (at 80 percent of capacity) was the more cost-effective choice, assuming a solar farm with no energy storage is the least desirable option in general.
All this sounds great in a world that will soon generate a lot of "waste" EV batteries. But, as usual, there are caveats. First, the solar farm plus reused battery storage system scenario is economically viable only if the batteries cost less than 60 percent of their original price.
Then there is the issue of battery consistency, the researchers note.
Read original full article
|
| |
|
|
Back to Featured Articles
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Energy News
|
|
| |
| |
