Redwood Materials is giving old EV batteries a second life as microgrids
Redwood Materials Reorients old EV batteries in energy storage systems that cost “much less” than new storage projects, the company announced on Thursday.
The recycling and manufacturing company of electric vehicle batteries, founded by the former Tesla chief technologist, has created a new division called Redwood Energy to manage these projects. The objective is to divert the “depreciated but functional” EV batteries from the recycling flow and to reuse them in “low cost and large -scale” energy systems which can help connect critical gaps in the energy network.
Redwood says that it receives more than 20 GWh of batteries per year – the equivalent of 250,000 electric vehicles – which represents approximately 90% of all lithium -ion batteries and recycled battery materials in North America. And often, the batteries it receives for recycling still have a lot of usable energy capacity – up to 50%. These are batteries that are no longer suitable to supply an electric vehicle, but which still have enough life to serve a goal.
Thus, rather than recycling these always functional batteries, the redwood transforms them into stationary storage systems. And society says it will be an increasing opportunity because more and more EV batteries reach the end of their lifespan. Redwood estimates that more than 100,000 electric vehicles will leave the road this year only.
After recovering the batteries, the Redwoods engineers carry out a diagnostic verification to determine if it is an appropriate candidate for recovery or recycling. If it is reusable, the pack is installed in “flexible modular storage systems” which can operate independently or connect to the grid. Redwood says that he has “an hour of gigawatt” of reusable batteries in his pipeline, a number he plans to grow 5 GWh in the coming year.
Redwood has already deployed its first microreseau powered by recycled EV batteries. The network, with 12 MW of electricity and 63 MWh of capacity, is located on the Campus of the Company in Nevada and is used to supply a modular center of 2000-GPU for the IA Crusoe infrastructure company. Redwood calls it the “largest deployment of world -life batteries in the world” with enough energy to feed “9,000 houses, support 20 AMTRAK trips between New York and Washington, DC, or invoice an EV for a trip of 240,000 miles – the distance to the moon”.
Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by JT Straubel. In addition to decomposing the scrap of the Tesla battery manufacturing process with Panasonic, Sequoia also recycles the batteries of Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Specialized, Amazon, Lyft, Rad Power Bikes, Lime, Stationary Storage Installations and others. The company also produces anodes and cathodes, critical battery components, in an installation of South Carolina.
