Using old electric vehicle batteries to store excess solar and wind energy

One company is supporting the large-scale deployment of renewable energy sources by giving batteries a second life

Spotted: As the world increasingly turns to renewable energy sources, the need for efficient and sustainable energy storage solutions is bigger than ever. That’s why Belgian startup Octave has designed a battery energy storage system (BESS) for stationary energy applications. The system is particularly innovative as it is made from the discarded batteries of electric cars. The development is timely given that Europe alone is expecting 30 million electric cars to be rolling off forecourts by 2030. 

According to Octave, it doesn’t make much sense to use virgin batteries for stationary energy storage. In fact, the company says that these battery packs still have a usable capacity of over 80 per cent. That’s why Octave decided to repurpose battery packs from electric vehicles that are considered end-of-life.

Octave upcycles these batteries and turns them into a source of sustainable energy storage. This not only gives the batteries a second life, but it also supports the large-scale deployment of renewable energy sources. The battery systems have a number of use cases but one of the most important is storing excess locally generated renewable energy. This helps to cope with the intermittency of solar and wind energy.

Built using modular design principles, Octave’s systems can be customised to meet specific needs, with capacities ranging from 30 kilowatt-hours up to several megawatt-hours. A monitoring and maintenance service ensures that a customer’s system always operates at peak efficiency, while ‘Optimal Battery Control’ technology takes into account factors such as the variability of energy prices, to charge the system when prices are low, avoiding the need to consume energy when prices are high.

The company recently closed a €2 million seed funding round, co-led by private investors SPDG ventures, the family office of the Périer-D’Ieteren family and U2P, and the investment group of Ismaël Ben-Al-Lal. The funding will be used to drive the commercial rollout of the company’s circular battery solutions.

Effective energy storage is a crucial component of the energy transition. Much of the focus has been on batteries, and Springwise has previously spotted similar systems that re-use electric vehicle batteries, such as one that uses them for home storage systems. Other innovators are developing whole new energy storage technologies, such as one that uses heat and compressed air, and another that takes advantage of the properties of carbon dioxide.