Second-life battery research is important because electric vehicles (EVs) are entering the car market in increasing numbers. Although the batteries used in EVs usually only have a vehicle lifetime of 8-10 years, they still have significant capacity remaining for alternative uses. Finding secondary uses for the EV batteries reduces their up-front cost and provides benefits to consumers and utilities, such as demand charge management, renewable energy integration and regulation energy management.
Working in conjunction with our partners, we have successfully studied the baseline health of four EV batteries and developed a long-term testing protocol to track battery performance over time under second-use application cycling.
Download Documents:
- Short-Term Test Case, PV Firming
- Long-Term Test Case, Demand Charge Management (DCM)
- Long-Term Test Case, Regulation Energy Management (REM)
- Long-Term Test Case, Primary Frequency Response (PFR)
For more information on second-use batteries, please visit our project partner, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s webpage, Battery Second Use for Plug-In Electric Vehicles.
Project Funders:
Project Partners:
Program at a Glance
- Program Goals
To identify alternative uses of electric car batteries at the end of their useful life in automobiles
- CSE's Role
Built and operated Advanced Electric Vehicle Battery Test Facility on the UC San Diego campus Integrated test facility with campus microgrid data monitoring and generation/load resources Developed and implemented stationary application duty cycles for test batteries Monitored battery degradation through periodic health checks, known as Reference Performance Tests Analyzed battery performance data and prepared detailed testing reports
- Technologies
Clean Transportation, Emerging Technologies
- Key Partners
NREL, UCSD, Power Analytics, AeroVironment
- Impact Statement
Successfully tracked battery performance over time under second-use application cycling