Nissan, Partners Explore Afterlife of EV Batteries

Nissan and three partners will test and evaluate automotive-grade lithium-ion batteries, which retain up to 70% of their capacity after 10 years, for possible reuse in residential and commercial energy storage.

Specifically, Nissan is looking at the afterlife of the Li-ion pack in its Leaf electric vehicle with ABB, a Switzerland-based technology company that helps utility customers improve their power usage and lessen their environmental impact.

Yokohama, Japan-based 4R Energy, a joint venture between Nissan and Japanese industrial conglomerate Sumitomo launched in September 2010 for the purpose of researching second-life uses for EV batteries, also is involved in the research.

“Innovations in energy-storage systems are becoming more viable as the electric grid gets smarter,” says Nissan North America’s Ken Srebnik, senior manager of corporate planning.

He says it is important that Nissan manages the lifecycle of battery packs even after they outlive their automotive applications.

The Japanese auto maker, which has been retailing the Leaf since December 2010 and sold 9,674 units in 2011 in the U.S., foresees the EV’s battery pack being able to store power from the electrical grid when there is low demand and feed electricity back into the grid during peak demand.

The Leaf’s battery pack also could be a backup source of electricity during power outages, Nissan says.

The companies will develop a prototype Leaf battery that has a 50 kWh-capacity, which Nissan says is enough to meet the electricity needs of 15 “average homes” for two hours. The current Leaf pack has a 24 kWh-capacity.

In a call with media, Srebnik says Nissan and its partners predict pilot projects with utilities “in the next two years” for the repurposed Li-ion packs.

While it will take a while to distribute large amounts of Leaf battery packs to the aftermarket, ABB’s Gary Rackliffe doesn’t see this as an issue. He says Nissan will focus on reusing the Leaf pack for smaller, community-energy storage projects, supporting the grid at the transformer level with power backup for four or five houses.

“It doesn’t take 1,000 vehicles for us be able to put together these solutions,” he says, noting only something as large as a substation would require higher-capacity megawatt packs.

Says Srebnik: “We’re looking at building blocks…that could support community energy storage, and just make this a modular solution working up to larger sizes. There’s also some work going on in Japan looking at smaller applications that would be for home energy storage.”

At the moment, no money has been exchanged among the partners, although commoditization of the used Leaf Li-ion packs is the “eventual goal,” Nissan spokeswoman Katherine Zachary says.

Other auto makers also are pondering the future of their EVs battery packs. A Toyota official told WardsAuto in 2009 that having used-car batteries as a home-storage solution for spotty solar or wind energy was being studied.

[email protected]