Rivian's Illinois Factory Will Run On Recycled EV Batteries (yahoo.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Rivian is joining with Redwood Materials to reuse EV batteries for energy storage -- the largest repurposed-battery energy storage system for an automotive manufacturer in the U.S., executives told The Wall Street Journal. Redwood Materials is a battery-recycling firm started by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. Once completed later this year, Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., will draw electricity from more than 100 Rivian EV batteries in an area the size of a small parking lot. It will reduce Rivian's dependence on the power grid during peak demand hours. "It saves Rivian money on what it takes to run the plant. It reduces the demand on the grid, which is great," Rivian Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe said in an interview.
In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said.
In the Rivian project, the batteries will come from either its test vehicles or from vehicles that have viable batteries but can no longer drive. Those batteries get sent off to Redwood, which integrates them into power storage units. Both companies declined to specify the cost of this project. The setup is expected to initially provide 10 megawatt-hours of energy, equivalent to about 1,000 home-energy battery storage units linked together, Redwood's Straubel said. "These batteries are already built," he said. "We need to integrate them and connect them together, but that can happen quite fast. They don't have to get imported from some other place." [...] Scaringe said that while branching into battery energy storage systems is "not a focus for us as a business right now," Rivian hopes to do more at its sites with Redwood. "There's hopefully a lot more, and there's going to be a lot of batteries we'll have access to," he said.
Charging Batteries (Score:1)
Re:Charging Batteries (Score:5, Informative)
Even when residential and office/retail type businesses pay flat rate, heavy industrial electricity users pay based on time of day. When there's high demand, they can even be cut off (in exchange for getting lower rates the rest of the time). Being able to buffer electricity use allows them to cut costs.
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More likely, the AC oil-burner's too STOOPID to consier that they might charge them with wind turbines. You know, like the turbine farm that runs for TEN MEASURED MILES on I-65 in Indiana.
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Are you trying to sell the same power twice ?
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On, *no*, no one would *ever* consider installing their own wind turbines rather than diesel generators, oh, no, not possible...
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Re:Charging Batteries (Score:4, Informative)
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I came here thinking the same thing. I see others say it's to offset peak usage hours. But still, the energy conversion needed to charge these batteries would negate the benefit, right? Something does not add up here in my opinion. Sounds like PR nonsense to me at best.
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I'm a big fan of using these battery farms to stabilize the grid (voltage and frequency correction, power factor correction). One of the few things that I think that they do well. I would have been much more excited to see, "Company using recycle EV batteries for cheap grid stabilization".
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The stabilization effect comes automatically, facepalm.
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What?
Charging batteries and actively pushing power back onto the grid to correct power factor and maintain grid voltage and frequency are two complete different things.
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Yes, and?
What is your question regarding that?
You know what an inverter is?
Google it ...
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Please enlighten me AC. Show me your math prowess.
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Sometimes off-peak power can be very cheap. The math usually doesn't work out unless you've found a source of cheap/free batteries, like say, being an EV manufacturer and having access to scrap batteries, or maybe from those rental scooters that are littered all over every major city (don't actually do this).
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I live in a small town of roughly 17,000. A few years ago Bird brought in scooters to my town. Why? Who knows? However, someone left one of the things laying in my front yard and at the time I had no freakin' idea what "Bird" was. When I tried to move the thing the wheels would barely spin and it started an alarm. I picked it up and thew it over in a field. Needless to say they lasted about a year until they were nowhere to be seen any longer. Did Bird pull them? Did people tear them apart? Who knows, but g
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I came here thinking the same thing. I see others say it's to offset peak usage hours. But still, the energy conversion needed to charge these batteries would negate the benefit, right?
Absolutely not. The charge/discharge round trip losses will be a few percent, maybe 10% if the batteries are in bad shape. The price difference between peak and off-peak is often 5-10X. Commercial users also get hit with demand surcharges based on the peak draw during the month and those can really make a huge difference. Using batteries to smooth out those peaks can be a bigger savings even than avoiding draw during peak times.
Even for residential use, the savings can be significant. I have batterie
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Demand is much lower at night, so they can charge them overnight on cheap electricity, and use it during the day.
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Came here to ask exactly this.
Even many residential customers can get time-of-use rates these days. You'll almost never see ROI from buying your own bank of batteries, but in climates where the bulk of your electric bill doesn't go towards air conditioning, some people manage to make it work by charging their EV and doing dishes/laundry during off-peak hours - no extra batteries needed.
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They can be charged from the grid, or since most industrial factories have a great wide expanse known as a "rooftop", you could put up solar cells as well which can during the day provide energy to run the factory and charge the batteries.
Putting solar on roofs can generate a surprising amount of electricity especially if you have a lot of i
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In theory.
In praxis we have two problems:
a) most solar panels at the moment come from China, they are taxed so high, that they are expensive
b) not considering taxes, the prize for panels are dropping constantly and rapidly
So, if you wait for next administration to cut the import tariffs, and expect a 25% price drop in 2 or 3 years (likely it is much more), you can get the solar panels for a quarter of the current price, in 3 or 4 years.
Re:Charging Batteries (Score:4, Informative)
"Redwood will turn those into a stationary storage installation that can help reduce Rivian's energy costs during times of peak demand, the companies said in a press release."
from https://insideevs.com/news/792... [insideevs.com]
If power is expensive at peak demand, and cheap (or free) at times with no demand, it makes sense to use batteries to store the cheap energy and use it when energy is expensive
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Don't these batteries have to be charged
You really thought you had a mic drop moment there, didn't you? Holy fuck. STOP THE PRESS, BATTERIES HAVE TO BE CHARGED!
Ask Rivian (Score:2)
Will they have their batteries always connected to the internet like they force us to do with our cars? I think not. Commercial and Industrial applications understand the concept of zero trust security and being able to lock your stuff down and would literally laugh if they were forced to keep it online all the time even when there is no documented need for them to be online, but yet they force owners to trust them (trust is and never should be a security model) and owners should always have the ability to
Who? (Score:2)
Rivian? Is this another AI shoe company?
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They make Amazon vans and EVs for people who have no right to be bitching about the price of gas.
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So many people today don't understand sarcasm.
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Or wikipedia?
Or just getting it from the context of the summary?
Rivian is an EV company, and unlike a number of vaporware pedlers seeking their next VC round, actually makes and sells vehicles - around 50,000 last year.
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Oh yeah, the ones with the ugly headlights? Good for them, I didn't realize they actually sold any.
Bad idea? (Score:1)
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Lithium batteries have been used in many installations and while they do go up from time to time (It's happened to a couple of Tesla installations), it's
Beyond idiotic (Score:2)
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Perhaps you like to check how big conversion losses usually are?
And then consider: are people who get rich with investing money, usually bad in math?