Second Use of Retired Lithium-ion Battery Packs from Electric Vehicles: Technological Challenges, Cost Analysis and Optimal Business Model

Driving rural energy access: a second-life application for electric-vehicle batteries

“…Recent data suggest thermal conditions could have dramatic effects on the useful life of these batteries in vehicle; vehicles considered for an NREL study in areas with higher-than-average battery pack temperatures (Phoenix, AZ), experienced annual percentage increases in resistance at approximately twice the rate of vehicles studied in Minneapolis, MN across different driving styles, where average pack temperatures were 20-30°C lower (Smith et al 2010, Pesaran et al 2013. However, employed in environments with lower voltage requirements (such as rural micro-grids) these batteries could still experience 5-10 years of continued functionality in reuse scenarios (Peterson et al 2010, Lih et al 2012.…”

“…Various national laboratory reports (Cready et al 2003, Sullivan and, peer-reviewed articles Pesaran 2011, Lih et al 2012), and consulting firm case studies (Hensley et al 2012) have pointed to opportunities for second use applications, and early empirical data from BEV use studies suggest these devices will experience considerable life beyond their expected primary functionality. The majority of these efforts have focused on industrial uses, such as grid firming and load balancing, with the hope of decreasing the upfront ownership costs of these power packs for consumers through a profitable second use application (Peterson et al 2010, Neubauer and Pesaran 2011, Lih et al 2012. Closer analysis has shown that most of these use cases provide minimal economic returns due to projected decreases in overall battery costs in the future, the cost of repurposing battery packs, and the amount of storage required in large-Environmental Research Letters Environ.…”

Market Diffusion of Second-life Electric Vehicle Batteries: Barriers and Enablers

“…This has motivated substantial published studies that look into B2U from various perspectives. Based on previous research on NiMH batteries, studies have been refined to include investigating technical and economic feasibility of B2U in various stationary applications [5,7,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16], quantifying the effect of B2U on EV cost reductions [17], development of frameworks/tools to determine optimum operating conditions to maximize battery value [2,18], analysing the environmental feasibility of second-life batteries [19] and so on. These studies show that although most B2U strategies are viable in terms of battery performance and economics, there are uncertainties in battery degradation and new battery price reduction.…”

Repurposing of batteries from electric vehicles

“…It was determined that government incentives are needed for residential customers to take on installation and procurement costs. Lih et al (2012) used a simple approach to estimate the residual value at the end of the first-use life in the vehicle. The product of residual capacity and calendar life fractions was multiplied with a parameter that was set to 0.9 in the study.…”