An energy storage system made up of ‘second life’ batteries previously used in Renault’s electric vehicle (EV) has been deployed for Umicore, a multinational materials technology company headquartered in Belgium.
Taken from Renault’s Kangoo utility EVs, the batteries will provide firm frequency response to the grid, acting as a revenue generator for Umicore’s industrial site.
Maintaining stability of the network at its operating frequency of 50Hz is vital for enabling the addition of more distributed energy resources, as the world’s grids move away from centralised generation, also meaning that renewables – described as intermittent, or more accurately as variable energy resources – can be more readily accommodated. The system delivered for Umicore also helps the materials company maintain power quality for running its own operations.
Technology provider Connected Energy said that using EV battery packs as stationary energy storage systems (ESS) in this way can extend their lifetime by as much as seven years. The UK-headquartered company, based in England’s northeast automotive sector powerhouse, celebrated the inauguration of the Umicore project as its biggest to date at 1.2MW of output and 720kWh capacity.
‘Doubling the value of the battery asset’
“We, typically, are receiving the battery packs when they’ve reached, or fallen to 70% capacity,” Mark Bailey, Connected Energy chief commercial officer (CCO), told Energy-Storage.news.
“The batteries that are supplied to us have met our technical criteria and specification, and effectively certified before we reuse them in our stationary storage applications.”
Connected Energy “stays at the battery pack level,” Bailey said, seeing a keen opportunity to tap what remains in batteries that are, he says, built to the highest technical specifications and standards, given that they have to have met the stringent criteria of being safe and reliable for use in manned vehicles in their “first life”.
Renault is one of a number of OEMs and carmaker groups that Connected Energy is working with, while remaining open to other battery and tech partnerships, Bailey told Energy-Storage.news in an interview.
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