So how can they use end of life batteries if they've reached the end of their life? (Genuine question)
Nick
Good question. End of life for a car is when the range drops below what's considered to be reasonable - I'm not sure of the exact figure, but as (I believe) the Renault Zoe lease is based on replacement at 75% capacity I would think that's going to be roughly in the ballpark.
Obviously a battery stacked in a shipping container along with hundreds of others hasn't got to earn its keep in the same way as if it was sat in an EV, so they can get loads more use out of them even though they might not be good enough for a car. Space isn't an issue in the same way so it's easy just to add more batteries to make up a shortfall in capacity.
I believe what's happening is that although EV batteries are declining in capacity much in line with expectation for the first few years, they are appearing to plateau out at around 80 to 85% capacity for quite a while after that. I read somewhere that Tesla batteries are doing even better, their plateau seems to be 90%.
If you look for example at used Nissan Leaf adverts, you see quite a few being advertised as still having 11 or 12 bars available on the display. 11 bars indicates 80%, 12 bars indicates 85%. So the batteries aren't getting to the point where it's worth ditching them yet.
Obviously you can use brand new battery packs in storage systems, but of course the costs are higher, I believe the going rate is around £500/KWh at the moment for new batteries, hence the market for used examples, it makes the economics far more attractive.
When you think about the cost of building these things when the wholesale price of electricity is around the £70/MWh it doesn't seem to make any sense, but of course the wholesale price varies wildly by the half hour, which is where you make your money back on demand response supply. I remember back in 2018 we had one day in September when the spot price for electricity on the market hit £1200/MWh at midday, and of course this is where you make your money. Charge them up with spare wind when no-one wants it at dead of night, then sell the whole lot for a few hours when the price is high.
