“Enormous surge:” EV batteries get second life as large-scale energy storage

Capitalising on Europe’s growing electric vehicle market, German second-hand battery specialist Voltfang has announced it had raised €15 million as part of its Series B financing round.

Headquartered in Aachen in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Voltfang has carved a niche for itself within the European energy storage market, by converting second-hand electric vehicle batteries for static uses.

The company was founded in 2020 as a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University by Afshin Doostdar, David Oudsandji, and Roman Albert.

Oudsandji described the Series B funding as directly responding to the “enormous surge” in orders from the first quarter of this year.

“Expanding the energy infrastructure is urgently needed across Germany and Europe, especially as we work to build resilience against external energy dependencies. We must act now to create more grid flexibility using large-scale battery storage,” added the co-founder.

The company also announced plans to open a new production facility in Aachen, which it claims will enable scalability to produce up to 1GWh of its systems to reduce Europe’s  “reliance on battery storage from China and other Asian countries.”

The company currently has a range of BESS units covering use cases for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to large utility-scale projects.

Its Voltfang 2 and Voltfang 2 Indoor units start of at 50kW/45kWh, which the company says are “ideal for businesses looking to reduce their energy costs in the long term and operate more sustainably.”

Designed to work in tandem with solar, Voltfang has installed a series of these units at one of Germany’s busiest airports in Stuttgart. So far, 0.54kWh of capacity has been installed at the airport, with a ten-fold expansion planned for the future.

Voltfang also offers its Voltfang 2 Plus GS for utility-scale purposes, starting at 1.2MW of capacity and a discharge duration of 3.2MWh.

The company claims to have so-far repurposed over 6,900 EV batteries for static storage purposes.

New Zealand weighs in on repurposed EV batteries

Over in this part of the world, Kiwi gentailor Meridian Energy has deployed its own unique solution for repurposing electric vehicle batteries.

Located in Springs Junction between Nelson and Christchurch on Aotearoa’s South Island, Meridian has repurposed 27 Nissan Leaf Batteries as part of a 360kWh EV charging station.

Opened in March of this year, Meridian General Manager described the site as “a long way from a normal EV charging set-up, but it’s a great example of Kiwi ingenuity and doing what’s needed to get the job done.”

Meridian carried out the project in collaboration with Melbourne-based battery firm Relectrify.