Automotive battery packs can still serve a purpose after being retired from vehicles and before being recycled. Stationary energy storage goes hand-in-hand with renewable energy and Rivian will soon demonstrate this capability, starting its first stationary storage project supporting a micro-grid in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico in partnership with The Honnold Foundation and Casa Pueblo, a non-profit, community-based organization. Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe and climber, Alex Honnold -- rock climber of "Free Solo" fame will sit down and discuss the project in a livestream scheduled for Saturday at 8:00 PM Eastern. You can watch it live and discuss the project in a separate thread. Rivian has 135 kWh packs from its vehicle development program ready to be used for this effort. It sounds like the modules are taken from the packs and then arranged in a manner convenient for their future home. Check out the official press release below for more details. Rivian demonstrates battery second-life capabilities in Honnold Foundation partnership CEO RJ Scaringe, Free Solo's Alex Honnold to announce collaboration on June 15 livestream DENVER, June 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 15, electric adventure vehicle maker Rivian is announcing a project to use its second-life batteries in a solar microgrid initiative with the Honnold Foundation. The goal: to support energy independence and adoption of renewable power generation. The project, in the town of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, marks Rivian's first steps in its broad plan to utilize second-life batteries for a wide variety of applications. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and elite climber Alex Honnold will discuss the project in Denver, Colorado on June 15 at 6PM MT. The conversation will be moderated by endurance athlete and podcaster Rich Roll. The livestream can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/c/RivianOfficial/live The company is using 135kWh battery packs from its development vehicles to support the project. Rivian has designed its pack, module, and battery management system to seamlessly transition from vehicle energy storage to stationary energy storage at the end of their vehicle life. The battery module's thin design enables second-life applications that are space-efficient and customizable, important for environments with existing infrastructure. "Second-life batteries are a big enabler to accelerating widespread adoption of renewable energy, and it's exciting to envision this system contributing importantly to a community. This project allows us to model a customized energy storage solution that takes into account space constraints, disaster resiliency and energy independence," said Scaringe. Adjuntas is a city of 20,000 in midwestern Puerto Rico. It was severely impacted by Hurricane Maria in 2017, and with climate change increasing the frequency and severity of storms, Adjuntas NGO Casa Pueblo has sought to collaborate on rugged, affordable sources of community power. The Honnold Foundation and Rivian battery engineers visited Casa Pueblo earlier in 2019 to meet with community leaders and together are designing a site-specific system that will power many of the businesses located in the Adjuntas town square. In power loss scenarios, the downtown solar microgrid will allow Adjuntas residents access to electricity for core businesses. By offsetting day-to-day electric bills, the system also brings down high commercial energy costs, which in Puerto Rico are twice the national average. The system is expected to launch in 2020. Rivian is developing vehicles, technology and services that inspire people to get out and explore the world. With a team of more than 1,000 people, Rivian has development centers in Plymouth, Mich.; San Jose, Calif.; Irvine, Calif; and Surrey, England; along with a 2.6-million-square-foot manufacturing plant in Normal, Ill. Rivian will launch the R1T and R1S in the US in late 2020, with introduction to other global geographies starting in 2021. Rivian is now accepting preorders for its R1T and R1S. The Honnold Foundation envisions a world where all people have equal access to opportunity and live in balance with the environment. To make this mission statement a reality, the foundation funds solar power initiatives that are helping to tackle global energy inequality through environmentally sound means. Casa Pueblo is a non-profit environmental watchdog community-based organization that promotes, through voluntary participation of individuals and groups, protection of the environment. Its mission is to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places in Puerto Rico; to practice and promote the responsible use of the land's ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist others to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.
I think they need to get production of the vehicles going 1st. They seem to be getting the cart before the horse. IE reuse before use of their battery packs. I hope they last 15-20 years or more like good Battery Thermal Controlled packs with Liquid cooling. So reuse will be 10-20 years from now.
Very cool idea. Unless I missed it, it's not clear how they will launch the system in 2020 from 'second life' battery packs when their EVs are being launched in late 2020. I'm guessing Rivian is going to seed the system with new battery packs and then either add and/or replace them with second life battery packs as they become available? Or perhaps they already have a pile of used battery packs from all their testing? Looking forward to reading more about this. Once the Puerto Rico system is up and running, an interesting idea would be to give the EV owner the option to keep their battery packs and repurpose them, say, to use them in their own home/garage as storage banks for their solar panel system. I've seen a few YT videos where the homeowner used old Tesla EV battery packs in this manner.
During the development of their vehicles they've built a number of battery packs that can't be used in production vehicles or, I guess, other development vehicles. So, this is a great way to begin a "second-life" program.
Just a heads up if you're on this thread, the livestream is just about to start in this other one... https://rivianchat.com/forum/threads/rivian-livestream-adventurous-forever-with-rj-scaringe-and-alex-honnold.5323/
