Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced plans to use old electric car batteries to supply power direct to the National Grid during peak hours.
Working in collaboration with Wykes Engineering, JLR will develop one of the largest energy storage systems in the UK to harness and wind power using second-life Jaguar I-Pace batteries.
A single Wykes Engineering Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) utilises 30 I-Pace batteries and can store up to 2.5MWh (megawatt hours) of energy at full capacity. The aim is to supply enough batteries to store a total of 7.5MWh of energy – enough to power 750 homes for a day – by the end of 2023.
The integration is simple: the batteries are removed from Jaguar I-Pace and slotted into racks in the containers on-site at the Chelveston renewable energy park in Northamptonshire.
Second-life battery supplied for stationary applications, like renewable energy storage, could exceed 200 gigawatt-hours per year by 2030, creating a global value over $30 billion, according a 2019 McKinsey report.
Once the battery health falls below the required level of second-life use, JLR says it will recycle the batteries to recover raw materials.
François Dossa, executive director, strategy and sustainability at JLR, said: “Our sustainability approach addresses the entire value chain of our vehicles, including circularity of EV batteries.
“Our EV batteries are engineered to the highest standards and this innovative project, in collaboration with Wykes Engineering, proves they can be safely reused for energy sector application to increase renewable energy opportunities. Using the 70-80 percent residual capacity in EV batteries, before being recycled, demonstrates full adoption of circularity principles.”
David Wykes, managing director of Wykes Engineering, added: “One of the major benefits of the system we’ve developed is that the containers are connected to the Grid in such a way that they can absorb solar energy ,that could otherwise be lost when the grid reaches capacity.
“This excess energy can now be stored in the second life I-Pace batteries and discharged later .This allows us to ‘overplant’ the solar park and maximise the amount of power we generate for the area of land we are using.”