When you think about cheaper batteries and where our modern day Energy Storage Solutions will come from, most might think of a PhD student with his graduate students inventing a new material that enables high energy density battery cells at record low prices.
Instead we are turning to car manufacturers to unlock the – as of today – cheapest way to get large volumes of energy storage into the grid.
We already knew with the rise of EVs – thank you to Tesla for developing the early market – there were opportunities that would arise in recycling the “dead” cells.
However, little did people know that when an EV battery cell is qualified as “unusable” it still maintains 80% of its total capacity. This is a drawback for EVs as it can kill range, but, at a grid scale level – where space isn’t usually an issue – those cells can be used.
With all the major manufacturers joining the party on providing utilities their used cells – including GM and BMW – the space continues to heat up.