Smartville has secured $5.9 million from the US Division of Vitality to scale up its second-life battery program.
From pv journal USA
In 2021, international gross sales of electrical autos will attain 16 million items, highlighting the fast demand, stated the Worldwide Vitality Company. The vitality transition in transportation is simply starting.
Most batteries retired from EVs nonetheless have about 70% of their capability left, says San Diego-based startup Smartville, noting that this makes them an excellent candidate for second-life use. Qthat is the chance that Smartville seeks to grab, by repurposing EV batteries as grid-scale vitality storage to retailer renewable vitality.
“Our second life vitality storage product repurposes EV batteries to reliably retailer energy from photo voltaic and wind,” stated Antoni Tong, chief government officer of Smartville. “The result’s that the system can proceed to energy our communities, lowering our dependence on outdoors vitality sources.”
The corporate introduced that it acquired a $5.9 million grant from the US Division of Vitality to scale this service. The grant comes as a part of a $75 million funding package deal created via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation, which supplies a complete of 10 initiatives that advance EV battery recycling and reuse efforts.
Smartville’s MOAB product can maintain between six to 10 battery packs with nominal scores between 200 kWh to 500 kWh. The corporate’s proprietary suite of software program, {hardware} and diagnostics has assured efficiency for stationary storage, enterprise companies and utility prospects.
“We realized early on that the one approach to develop an actual marketplace for this sort of know-how is to make a full guarantee or assure of efficiency,” stated Mike Ferry, president of Smartville. “We validated our know-how utilizing battery modules obtained by disassembling EV battery packs, and we cycled the modules with completely different chemistries from completely different automakers. in consequence, we now have software program and {hardware} that may deal with batteries in several states of well being inside the similar system and we will enhance the general state of well being of the system over time.
Ferry stated Smartville noticed advantages in specializing in repurposing battery packs, slightly than doing disassembly and repurposing battery modules. The corporate says that labor and prices for disassembly are prohibitive when reaching a megawatt-hour or gigawatt-hour scale.
Smartville stated it would use the Division of Vitality’s funds to facilitate the commercialization of its repurposing product. The corporate first plans to attain UL certification for the know-how and can observe that with an illustration venture of 4 MWh. The pilot venture will find a repurposed battery with an current energy plant in central California in an recognized deprived neighborhood.
Smartville was launched from the College of California, San Diego, beginning with a $2 million authorities mortgage via the Superior Analysis Initiatives Company – Vitality program. The corporate stated it would set up one other prototype system by the top of the second quarter with Southern Energy. Whereas Smartville has different early-stage initiatives within the works, it’s specializing in certification, commercialization, and scaling up its manufacturing within the coming yr.
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