Redwood Materials has recycled batteries for electric bikes and Tesla batteries. Now you’re ready to level up a few sizes.
The electric vehicle battery manufacturing and recycling company founded by Tesla’s former chief technology officer announced today that it will help decommission and recycle a 4 MWh stationary storage substation in Kauai, Hawaii, as part of a massive solar array. Dismantling was recently completed and the batteries are now being transported to the company’s facility in northern Nevada for recycling.
It will be one of Redwood’s first battery energy storage systems and an important step in the company’s broader effort to demonstrate that lithium-ion batteries and energy storage products of all sizes can have a new life beyond the current ones.
He’s ready to level up a few sizes.
For JB Straubel, former CTO of Tesla and founder of Redwood, it is a project that has come full circle. Straubel participated in the initial installation of Tesla in 2015.
The Kauai project consists of a 52 megawatt-hour battery facility plus a 13 MW SolarCity solar farm. Tesla and Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC), the electric company that ordered the project, initially said the project would reduce fossil fuel use by 1.6 million gallons per year.
“When it comes to renewable energy deployment, Hawaii has always been a leader, driving some of the first and largest solar and storage projects on the planet,” Straubel said in a statement. “Our partnership with KIUC to decommission and recycle the first-generation storage project at the Anahola substation demonstrates their true commitment to sustainability.”
To be sure, the batteries being dismantled and recycled are not Tesla batteries; those batteries are in a separate KIUC facility. “That one is still disappearing and will be for many years to come!” the company said.
The storage system that Redwood will recycle is KIUC’s Anahola substation, a 4 MWh battery storage system with a nominal power of 6 MW consisting of aluminum oxide, nickel, cobalt and lithium chemicals. The system consists of eight battery containers for a total of 2,320 modules weighing 44,544 kg (98,202 pounds or 49 tons).
Redwood sees big business in stationary storage decommissioning and recycling, noting that 4.8 GW were installed last year in the U.S. alone. The company recently partnered with Southern Company and EPRI to recycle one of the first systems grid-scale lithium-ion battery storage facility in Cedartown, Georgia.
“As we think about long-term battery circularity, decommissioning and recycling of stationary storage is an integral part of our business,” the company said.
Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by Straubel. In addition to breaking down waste from Tesla’s battery manufacturing process with Panasonic, Redwood also recycles electric vehicle batteries from Ford, Toyota, nissanSpecialized, Amazon, Lyft, Rad Power Bikes and others. The company also produces anodes and cathodes, critical battery components, at a facility in South Carolina.
Many of the batteries in those first-generation electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, are reaching the end of their useful life and need to be recycled. After receiving batteries from its various partners, Redwood begins a chemical recycling process in which it removes and refines the relevant elements such as nickel, cobalt and copper. A certain percentage of that refined material can then be reintegrated into the battery manufacturing process. 95 percent of key battery metals on average, according to Redwood.
