ENERGY STORAGE POTENTIAL OF USED ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION IN INDIA

Abstract

The government of India is committed to reduce India’s CO₂ emissions by 45% by the end of the year 2030. This accentuates the need for rapid expansion of renewable energy (RE) generation in India. RE generating systems require batteries as an energy storing medium. In India, scarcity of the elements required to manufacture the battery makes them expensive as India imports the manufactured battery packs from other nations. Moreover, it can also jeopardize the energy security of the country in a high-RE future. Electric vehicles (EV) also use batteries for energy storing purpose and these batteries gradually decay in capacity. When the battery decays to 80% of its full capacity, the battery becomes unsuitable for propulsion application in EV. This is the end of first life cycle of EV batteries. Reduced capacity of these batteries decreases the car manufacturer interest in reusing these batteries and recycling is also not environment friendly. But these batteries, even with the reduced capacity, can further be used for the energy storage applications in solar and wind power plants. So, use of these batteries in RE storage application can be identified as the solution for the end of life of EV batteries. This can accelerate the growth of both EV and RE penetration in the country. This report studies the reuse of EV batteries after the first end of life in propulsion application and to what extent these used batteries can be reused in RE storage application. We have studied the EV growth trajectory, annual battery capacity additions for EV, RE growth trajectory and the projections of plant load factor for solar and wind power plants in India. We estimate the potential for RE storage application from reused EV batteries till the end of year 2038. To estimate the reusable battery capacity, we have used the battery degradation models for various types of EV battery chemistry. The result of our analysis shows that there is an estimated storage potential of around 1300 – 1870 GWh in used EV batteries by the year 2038.This is equivalent to around 17% - 39% of average daily RE generation from solar and wind power plants, in various scenarios, by 2038.