Old Waymo batteries will now get a second life as part of grid-tied energy storage systems in the markets where the autonomous vehicle maker operates, the company announced today.
Battery packs from Waymo’s Jaguar I-PACE fleet will be repurposed via a partnership with B2U Storage Solutions, a California-based battery recycling company founded in 2019. It’s a partnership that has been in the works for several years, B2U CEO Freeman Hall told Latitude Media, and is part of Waymo’s broader efforts to extend the useful life of its vehicles and support a cleaner grid.
Battery recycling is a still-nascent, capital-intensive business. It faces significant economic challenges, plus logistical and permitting hurdles. Recycling companies are only now starting to see meaningful volumes of recyclable materials in circulation, which has made it challenging to operate plants at full scale and make the economics pencil out on recycling alone. That dynamic has pushed other players to explore additional ways to capture value from EV batteries — most notably recycling incumbent Redwood Materials’ expansion into behind-the-meter storage for data centers.
Self-driving cars make for unique battery inputs, however, in that fleets are on the road almost constantly, leading to a much higher utilization than for most personal vehicles, which are parked most of the time. Waymo batteries need to be swapped out sooner than the average 10 year lifespan of EV batteries, meaning more recyclable material will potentially be available sooner.
Another benefit for the grid storage use case, said Waymo sustainability lead Adam Lenz, is that the company’s centrally managed autonomous fleet gives partners like B2U very consistent battery types and detailed performance data, because the cars are running at high duty cycles and are monitored closely over their lifetimes.
Waymo’s batteries will be received by B2U at its facility in Lancaster, California, and deployed in both California and Texas, two of Waymo’s current hubs. Over the course of the partnership, Lenz said Waymo expects to pass thousands of batteries along for redeployment.
The company is currently operational in 11 cities, with plans to add another 30 cities this year.
B2U’s deployment plans
The company has several sites in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara Counties, with its early projects ranging between 25 and 30 megawatt-hours, using 500 to 600 batteries per site.
In total, B2U has 4,000 batteries in the field today, housed in shipping container-sized cabinets that each hold up to 54 EV battery packs, depending on their size. Many of those currently deployed came from the first generation of the Nissan Leaf, one of the earliest mass-market EVs in the U.S., whose smaller pack designs helped B2U prove out its approach. Now, the company has moved on to integrating batteries from Honda, General Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, and others.
B2U is focusing its next wave of growth on Texas, where it recently deployed about 500 EV batteries in a 24-MWh system on an acre near San Antonio, the first of several projects planned for the region. From there, the company is moving toward larger projects of up to 100 MWh per site, which is more efficient from a deployment perspective, Hall said.
Developing, owning, and operating its own projects is a key part of B2U’s economics, in part because doing so allows the company to efficiently access federal investment tax credits for battery storage, Hall said.
B2U so far manages a portfolio of operating projects, all in areas near population centers facing transmission constraints in California and Texas. Both are states with high solar penetration, where there’s immense opportunity for batteries to earn revenue, Hall explained. B2U bids its systems into wholesale power markets, while also selling capacity and reliability services to utilities and grid operators. As projects are placed into the operating portfolio and start generating steady cash flows, the company leverages that capital to finance its next projects.
At present, B2U is focused on front-of-meter projects. That’s compared to Redwood Energy’s new grid storage product, which is primarily being deployed behind the meter. Looking ahead, however, Hall said the company does see a path forward with large energy users, and could eventually deploy similar systems to firm solar and complement backup systems for data centers.
