GM, Nissan Will Offer Old Electric Car Battery Packs for Stationary Energy Storage
June 17th, 2015The aftermath of the Tesla Powerwall announcement has been pretty hilarious. Now everyone is coming out with stationary batteries for home and business use. However, nobody besides Tesla is willing to say how much their systems will cost.
Via: MIT Technology Review:
The Nissan Leaf went on sale in December 2010, which means that the batteries in the earliest models of the world’s most popular electric vehicle need, or will soon need, to be replaced. Those batteries are not necessarily bound for the recycling bin, though: on Monday Nissan announced the first commercial arrangement to use “second-life batteries,” recovered from EVs, in stationary energy storage systems.
Nissan formed a joint venture with Sumitomo Corp. to develop second-life battery applications not long after the Leaf first appeared. The automaker is working with energy storage supplier Green Charge Networks to redeploy the used batteries in systems for commercial and industrial customers. The announcement from the Japanese automaker came the day before GM unveiled its own battery reuse program: an administration building at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan is now equipped with an energy storage system that uses batteries collected from Chevrolet Volts. GM made its announcement Tuesday at the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference in Detroit.
