GM has sent new and old EV batteries to Redwood Materials and has since reused the pack for stationary energy storage, the companies announced today.
GM’s Second Life Battery has already gone through the Redwood process and has expanded into a 12-megawatt microgrid at its headquarters in Sparks, Nevada. The electricity from that installation will flow to a nearby 2,000 GPU data center owned by Crusoe.
Microgrid is part of Redwood’s new energy storage division, which was released in June, focusing on reusing EV batteries for grid-scale energy storage. Through testing, the company discovered that many of the cells that arrived at the facility still had a significant amount of life left.
Rather than recycle the embedded materials, the company has kept the packs intact and connected them to create large energy storage systems that can store excess power that is often produced by the sun and wind for later use. The Crusoe project’s batteries are supplied by solar panels.
“I think this could grow faster than the core recycling business,” said JB Straubel, co-founder and CEO of Redwood. Redwood has already recovered about 70% of all batteries or discarded batteries in use in the US.
Redwood is not the only company following its playbook, but the ability to integrate different packs from different manufacturers and chemicals can give you an edge over its competitors.
There are existing agreements for both GM and Redwood, but the new collaboration shows an expansion.
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One notable detail is that GM’s willingness to supply Redwood with not only old batteries but new batteries, giving him a hedge against uneven growth in EV sales. New sales fell 6.3% in the second quarter of this year, but are expected to surge before the tax credits are phased out on September 30th, according to Cox Automotive.
Meanwhile, energy storage has grown consistently in recent years. New installations for the first quarter of this year reached a new record, up 57% year-on-year.
