For those attending the Advanced Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo in Long Beach this week, I’ll be presenting this morning on a panel from 10:30am to noon on the prospects and policy needs for repurposing used electric vehicle batteries.

As Berkeley and UCLA Law covered in our 2014 report Reuse and Repower, used electric vehicle batteries have the potential to provide a lot of inexpensive energy storage:

Assuming 50 percent of the battery packs on the road in 2014 can be repurposed, with 75 percent of their original capacity, these second-life batteries could store and dispatch up to 850 megawatt hours of electricity (one megawatt hour is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity used by about 330 homes over one hour). The aggregated capacity is also equal to 425 megawatts worth of power (one megawatt can provide sufficient power in any given moment to approximately 750 households) – almost one-third of the energy storage capacity that utilities are required to procure by 2020 under a recent California mandate.

Holding this market back from developing are factors such as uncertainty about second-life battery value, complex and adverse regulatory structures, liability concerns about which entity is responsible for second-life batteries, and lack of data about battery performance in both first and second life applications.

Key solutions include:

• Improved and expanded second-life battery pilot projects to demonstrate market potential;
• An industry-led regulatory working group to identify and address regulatory conflicts and needs that limit market development;
• Industry-developed technical performance standards for second-life battery certification that policy makers can use to clarify product liability; and
• Increased funding and incentives for data collection and dissemination on second-life battery projects.

More details can be found in our report and at the Expo, which promises to host some interesting discussions and off-site tours all week.