Nissan’s North American arm has teamed up with ABB (the world’s largest power and technology group), 4R Energy and Sumitomo Corporation of America to test the possibility of reusing the lithium-ion battery packs that are found in the Leaf, and in other electric and hybrid vehicles.
According to Nissan, EV batteries have a longer life span than the batteries found in cell phones or laptop computers. After 10 years of use, they still have up to 70% of their capacity remaining.
Nissan’s partnership is working on reusing these batteries in homes and stores. They are developing a prototype that would store energy from the power grid when usage is low, and kick in when usage is high. The battery packs would also come in handy as a back up power source in times of outages.
The prototype that the team plans on developing will have a capacity of 50 kilowatt hours, which is enough to supply about 15 average homes with electricity for up to two hours.
“It’s important to Nissan that we manage the complete lifecycle of the electric vehicle battery pack, even beyond its use in a Nissan car,” said Ken Srebnik, senior manager at NNA Corporate Planning. “Innovations in energy storage systems are becoming more viable as the electric grid gets smarter.”
Nissan has not mentioned when it hopes to have the first prototype done.
