Renerage Developing Renewable Energy Storage

A brand new startup in Davis is looking to lower the costs of battery storage devices dramatically by using second-life used lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles.  The idea of giving electric car batteries a second life in stationary storage products is not new, but Renerage has new angle on it. UCD Engineering Professor Jae Wan Park and his 3-person team want to focus solely on batteries from the Nissan Leaf because of several advantages:  They are passively air-cooled (most others use active liquid cooling), they use a “flat pack” battery (rather than spiral-wound ones like in the Tesla that look like oversize AA batteries) so they save space, and they can be swapped-out easily. You can see the product in a short YouTube video here.

Dr. Park has designed a module to repackage the used batteries, designed more sophisticated battery management software,  and come up with strategies to extend battery life. He is targeting larger systems where there may be economies of scale, not residential systems.  He is looking to have a standard 1 Megawatt-hour system in a 20-foot ISO shipping container as the lead product, providing peak shaving, peak-shifting, and load management services.  They project costs one-third to one-half those of the Tesla Powerwall.