Retired EV Batteries Turned into Grid Assets

B2U Storage announced that 500 retired EV batteries will be repurposed to provide 24 megawatt-hours of energy storage for the Texas grid. The site will interconnect to CPS Energy’s distribution system, charging while electricity is cheap and selling power back to the grid while also providing ancillary service to support grid stability. EV batteries are often replaced once their capacity drops to 70 to 80%. B2U’s technology enables the use of unmodified battery packs and operates effectively despite variance in the batteries’ capacities. 

Similarly, battery recycler Redwood Materials has installed the world's largest energy storage project made from used EV batteries, with 792 individual packs. The Nevada site totals 63 MWh that powers Crusoe’s miniature data center that has just 1 MW of computing load. Together with solar panels, the goal is to guarantee 24/7 clean power. 

In these projects, entire battery packs are reused directly rather than dismantled for mineral recovery. This can be especially relevant for lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, which have less value in traditional recycling since they do not contain expansive minerals such as nickel and cobalt. LFP batteries are cheaper to produce and rely on more common materials compared to nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries. However, NMCs deliver higher energy density, meaning more range from a lighter battery pack. With over 98% of cathode material and battery cells produced in China, LFP batteries have surged from under 10% of the global EV market in 2020 to nearly half today. As automakers such as Tesla and Volkswagen have adopted LFP in some of their EV models, a steady flow of retired packs will emerge, positioning second-life storage as an important bridge between EV adoption and long-term circular recycling.