Five used Chevrolet Volt batteries are at the heart of the Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s effort to determine the feasibility of a community energy storage system that would put electricity onto the grid. Over the next year, researchers from ORNL, General Motors and the ABB Group will conduct studies and compile data using a first-of-its-kind test platform officially commissioned today.
“With about one million lithium-ion batteries per year coming available from various automakers for the secondary market beginning in 2020, we see vast potential to supplement power for homes and businesses,” said Dr. Imre Gyuk, manager of the Energy Storage Research Program in DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. “Since these batteries could still have up to 80 percent of their capacity, they present a great opportunity for use in stationary storage devices before sending them to be recycled.”
By distributing electrical energy storage into many locations, these units could provide the benefits of a centralized unit but with potentially more localized applications. The ORNL platform provides 25 kilowatts of power and 50 kilowatt-hours of energy that could potentially provide cost-effective backup energy to homes and businesses, said Michael Starke of ORNL’s Energy and Transportation Science Division.
Given reports like “Drive Green 2020” that estimate production volumes of hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles at hundreds of thousands per year before the end of this decade, the potential for energy storage and production is impressive, according to Starke.
Already, GM and ABB have demonstrated how a Chevrolet Volt battery pack can collect electrical energy and feed it back to the grid to deliver supplemental power to homes or businesses. Researchers noted that the system could potentially reduce energy costs and increase grid stability and reliability.
Last year in San Francisco, a GM/ABB energy storage system provided 100 percent of the electricity needed to power a temporary structure for several hours. A similar application could one day power a group of homes or small commercial buildings during a power outage or help make up for gaps in solar, wind or other renewable power generation.
“In the future, distributed energy storage on the electric grid may become as commonplace as batteries in cell phones by providing greater energy reliability and reduced energy cost to the consumer,” said George Andrews of ORNL’s Power and Energy Systems Group.
Funding for this work was provided by DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The Office’s Energy Storage Research Program supports research on a wide spectrum of storage applications and a broad portfolio of technologies. Ongoing work with ORNL explores the feasibility of using re-purposed EV batteries for stationary storage applications.
GM (http://www.gm.com), which produces vehicles in 30 countries, is focused on assuring battery systems used in its vehicles provide environmental and societal benefits beyond their use in the vehicle. Long before a battery is recycled, secondary use in electric grid applications provides the opportunity to fully utilize these batteries.
ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in about 100 countries and provides 145,000 jobs.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://science.energy.gov/.
Ron Walli | Newswise
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