Hyundai joins US companies on second life storage
South Korean Hyundai Motor Group is cooperating with the two US companies CPS Energy and OCI Solar Power to develop and test a system for solar energy storage from recycled electric car batteries by September 2022.
According to Hyundai, a memorandum of understanding has now been signed between the three companies involved. CPS Energy is a large energy provider, OCI Solar Power is one of the largest solar energy developers in Texas. Under the collaboration, OCI Solar Power will procure “certain ESS components” (ESS: energy storage system) and oversee construction in the Alamo City, Texas. At the same time, CPS Energy will operate the storage system developed by Hyundai. All three parties will work to build the ESS and then analyse and share data from the project.
Hyundai Motor Group does not provide technical data on the storage system, such as the capacity of the energy storage system or the exact origin of the batteries used. Instead, it refers to known conditions, such as that a lithium-ion battery at a certain age is no longer as efficient as it should be for use in a car. However, Hyundai says the same battery can be recycled in an energy storage application and provide valuable energy storage. The partnership is an important step in testing this technology.
Hyundai is not just looking at buffering solar power. According to Jae Hyuk Oh, vice president of Hyundai Motor Group’s Energy Business Development Group, the storage can also be combined with hydrogen solutions to provide “flexibility against energy volatility in the US electricity market”.
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