Nissan begins researching battery second life in Brazil
Nissan and the university of Santa Catarina in Brazil have made an agreement to research battery second life functions for Nissan Leaf batteries as innovative energy storage solutions.
In Florianópolis in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina the partners came together to sign a memorandum of understanding. To begin, Nissan will provide the research team from the university with six old Leaf batteries, which were used in a taxi project in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro beforehand.
Should the cooperation prove to be long-term, the second life applications are set to be extensively tested. “Upon removal, the batteries retain a high charging and supply capacity,” said president of Nissan Brazil, Marco Silva. The cooperation will test exactly how much potential is in the batteries.
The main objective is to test how to best integrate the old batteries in energy storage systems to provide additional grid stability in Brazil. Considering that the average energy usage per household in Brazil is at 170 kWh per month, the team estimates that a single battery could provide enough energy for a household for three days.
Storage of solar energy is also an issue the team will be looking at. In the first test facility, they will install solar panels in Florianópolis. “This partnership with Nissan is very important for our laboratory because it will allow us to unite the two pillars of our research, which are electric mobility and energy storage,” said professor Ricardo Rüther, coordinator of the UFSC Photovoltaic Laboratory. Last year, his team worked on a solar-powered bus to ferry students about campus, among other things.
This is not the only initiative by Nissan to explore second life options for their batteries. In June, Nissan started a project in the Amsterdam Arena with a massive energy storage system containing 148 batteries. In the Japanese Namie, Nissan is also testing use in street lights with their subsidiary 4R Energy.
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