‘World’s largest’ second-life EV battery factory opens in just six weeks

A company in Vancouver, BC has opened what it calls the world's largest factory for turning old electric vehicle batteries into large-scale energy storage systems, and did so just six weeks after announcing the project. Moment Energy's new plant doesn't make new batteries. Instead, it takes EV batteries that are retired from cars, but still hold plenty of usable capacity, and rebuilds them into storage systems for places like data centers, hospitals, and factories.

The idea is that a battery no longer strong enough to power a car still has years of useful life left when weight and size no longer matter. Recycling it right away wastes that capacity. The company expects to produce 1 gigawatt-hour of storage systems a year by 2030 and says the factory will create over 100 jobs directly, with more than 1,000 additional jobs supported across British Columbia. It was backed by a CA$4.9 million investment from a Canadian government agency and has raised more than US$100 million total, including a recent US$40 million funding round.

This news doesn't involve a program or rebate for homeowners. But it points to a growing supply of cheaper, reused batteries heading into the energy storage market, which could eventually shape the cost and availability of battery storage products, including home batteries, as this kind of manufacturing scales up.