Second-life batteries

When batteries retire from EV applications, they often still have 70-80% of capacity.  Major car manufacturers have been investing in technologies to exploit remaining capacity in used EV batteries for stationary storage applications such as grid stabilization, industrial, commercial and residential consumption. Although EV battery re-use in stationary applications seems to offer obvious environmental and economic opportunities, whether end-of-life EV batteries should be recycled or re-used is still hotly debated in the community. Major challenges/barriers for re-use include:

  • Inferior performance compared to new batteries weakens the business case to use second-life batteries.
  • Price of new batteries are falling rapidly.

CIRCUSOL aims to remove the barriers for second-life EV battery in stationary applications by:

  1. Improving technical performance with battery remanufacturing technology. Remanufacturing technology at the cell level (developed by SNAM and CEA) can maximize efficiency by identifying and removing weak or damaged battery cells.
  2. Enhancing market confidence with labelling and certification protocols, and facilitating market adoption with performance-based PSS models.  
  3. Conducting cost and application analysis. Long-term business sustainability of second-life batteries will be assessed

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