An economic assessment of “second use” lithium-ion batteries for grid support

The lithium-ion vehicle battery market is forecast to grow to tens of thousands of megawatt hours and exceed $USD 30 billion annually in 2020. Retired batteries will typically retain 80% of their initial amp-hour capacity at the end of life and can either be recycled or disposed of in secondary markets. Given the volumes involved many markets may saturate and price will be determined by the economic return in a given application. This paper proposes an infrastructure for the large scale processing of battery packs for utility support and assesses their residual cycle life and the economic return expected.