this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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This Southern California solar farm is using retired EV batteries for storing the power and then send to the grid when needed. This way the retired batteries can extend their usefulness for several...::A Southern California company is showing how repurposing EV batteries for stationary storage can extend their usefulness for several years.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (13 children)

That’s actually an ingenious idea I hadn’t thought about. How much cheaper are these batteries once they’ve been retired? Would this be a viable option for someone running solar at home, and wanting to store the power for later use, or is a home battery still the better option?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yea, with a car you can't really use them once the range gets low enough

With this, a bunch of batteries can work together for much longer. You also don't need to worry about weight since they're in one place

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A Tesla Model 3, for example, has a battery capacity of 50 to 82 kWh. Let's assume the lowest capacity of 50 kWh. A car battery is basically unusable long before it has lost around half its capacity. So 25 kWh. American households on average consume 10.6 MWh annually or about 29 kWh per day.

So an old Tesla battery still provides enough electricity to power an American household for nearly an entire day.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Really puts into perspective what a monumental waste of energy individual traffic, also with electric cars, is as well.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well, sort of, it's just that any sort of locomotion requires a lot more energy than you might think.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah sure. But there's a difference between moving a 2 ton vehicle per person or a bike.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

There’s also something about their peak current being reduced with age, and in this use case, they don’t really need that peak current, so they really can stay useful for a long time in this use case

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