Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

There are small ones already in place, but you don't get to see them because they tend to be out the back of industrial sites or tacked on to solar arrays, like Tesla Powerwalls or Powerflow Sundials. There's nothing much to look with the bigger units at because they are just shipping containers full of batteries with the necessary control units.

EDF has one in operation at their West Burton site, it's been in operation since June 2018 and has 20 containers each with 2.45MW capacity.



Here's a pic of what they look like inside



Late last year they purchased Pivot Power, who are building one in Kent and one in Oxford (next to the Didcot station I believe). These are due on stream this year. I think EDF is planning for 10GW capacity over the next 15 years. The pic is a mock-up to give an idea of what they will look like.

I've been out of the loop for more than a year since I retired, the last time I was chatting to one of the guys from the renewables team he confessed that they weren't being able to proceed as fast as they wished because of the shortage of end of life EV batteries, they simply can't get their hands on as many as they want due to them lasting a lot longer in the cars than originally predicted.

Thanks Tim,
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.

its also cheaper than trying to sort the problem which we will all face one day , in the UK we do not recycle the EV packs
http://www.recyclingwasteworld.co.u...-used-electric-vehicle-batteries/218596/

Bad news on the ex-rain forests! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51464694

Interesting stuff. Thanks Tim.
Nick

That's the point I was trying to make. The world is looking at this from the wrong end. Sort the world's lungs out and a lot of the world's problems would get easier to solve......just my way of seeing the solution.

Interesting data Tim,

My i3 has an 8yr, 100,000 mile warranty on the battery to be 70% capacity & they expect the usable life to actually be 15yrs

IIRC, when I chopped in the last one at 3yrs, it was tested & showed way over 90 odd %

Interesting data here from Battery University, indicating how "guaranteed" capacity hence range is achieved by software hiding the true capacity at any time in battery life. Note how battery is initially only charged and discharged within controlled parameters to use only a proportion (50%) of new capacity and so eventually achieve the longevity claims.

I forsee a "batterygate" scandal on the horizon. The politicians will then want to ban batteries and we will have to use pedal cars.