…Redwood believes that by 2030, end-of-life batteries could supply more than 50 percent of the entire energy storage market. Instead of grinding up used batteries to reclaim the critical materials inside, put them to work storing electricity. There have been many experiments done that re-purpose used EV batteries which no longer can supply enough power to meet the need for rapid acceleration in an EV but still have up to 80 percent of their original energy storage capacity available…
…Traditional energy storage systems are high density and require heavy-duty cooling. To avoid this, Redwood’s team opted for an open-air, low-density system mounted on above-ground cable trays.
Spreading packs out in the open air helps avoid the need for active refrigeration, and stripping away moving parts like fans and filters minimizes potential reliability failures. Keeping the wiring above ground and limiting the size of each modular component minimizes the need for large equipment. As Sun explained, the result is a storage system that is faster to build, easier to inspect after storms, and cheaper to keep running over time…
Yes, I’m just unsure when the volumes hit.
Evidently they do seem to indicate a battery intake rate consistent with about 250,000 EV batteries a year.
Globally about 30 million cars are junked a year, so as EV adoption raises then they could reasonably get 8 fold more batteries even while splitting with other companies.
But they have a chokepoint that means they can only use a fraction of the batteries they get already, so more batteries won’t help them right now.