There Will Be Exchange Markets for Waste Electric Car Batteries

Because it is expected that there will be many old and junk batteries starting from 2018 due to expansion of supplies of electric cars, market standards to recycle old electric bus or electric car batteries as batteries for ESS (Energy Storage System) will be prepared.

Not only will batteries be recycled, but industries for finished products’ material such as used electric car markets and others will become more active.

Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy’s Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning made an announcement on the 29th that it has chosen PM Grow Consortium as a business for ‘Development and Demonstration of ESS (500 kWh level) Technologies using xEV Waste Batteries’.

Main focus of this business is to invest government’s budget of $5.2 million (6 billion KRW) by 2018 and prepare reasonable trading standards for markets after calculating and categorizing residual values of waste batteries by level. Although these batteries will be inadequate to be used for electric cars since charge and discharge performance of batteries fall about 20 to 40% if electric cars are operated for about 10 years, they can be used for ESS or UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).

To prepare trading standards for markets, PM Grow Consortium will collect and analyze waste electric car batteries, go through reprocessing and reconstitution steps, and develop commercialized ESS. It is planning to focus on proving economic feasibility and performance of reusing waste batteries during these steps and prepare standards for residual values.

Its goal afterwards is to finalize open-market-type ‘Battery Distribution Business Platform’ where normal electric car users, waste battery application consumers, battery lease businesses, and finished ESS products businesses participate.

Also as standards for residual values of batteries are prepared, one can expect that it will contribute in making used electric car markets more vitalized.

Including PM Grow, Orange Power, Min Tech, Korea Electronics Technology Institute, and Korea Testing Certification will participate in this business.

Through this business, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is planning to strengthen trading standards for markets such as standardization of quality and others to prepare stable trading of waste batteries between consumers and suppliers.

“By calculating residual value of how much we can recycle waste batteries, we are going to induce industries to recycle these batteries as ESS or UPS.” said Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning. “We are also going to prepare standardization of products and demonstration project based on ESS so that there are not any problems with performance, safety and others during commercialization step of waste batteries.”

Staff Reporter Park, Taejon | [email protected]