Can retired lithium-ion batteries be a game changer in fast charging stations?

As the global popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) continues to grow, the demand for EV batteries has significantly increased. Unfortunately, when the battery state of health (SoH) reaches a certain value, the batteries may no longer meet the driving requirements of EVs, resulting in many retired batteries. Properly disposing of these batteries is a major challenge. In this paper, we will take fast charging stations (FCSs) as an example to evaluate the economic feasibility of reusing retired batteries, which is one of the most environmentally friendly methods of disposal. To make a fair comparison between fresh and retired batteries, a bi-level sizing framework is designed to determine the optimal sizes of fresh and retired batteries, as well as photovoltaic (PV) panels in FCSs, to minimize the total cost. To ensure the high fidelity of results, diverse EV travel patterns are considered to generate the charging power demand. Additionally, a dynamic battery degradation model focused on batteries that have not yet reached their turning point is developed. This model is designed to precisely quantify the gradual reduction in battery capacity. We conducted several representative case studies using real-world data, and the simulation results indicate that FCSs with fresh batteries can achieve 42.2 % cost savings compared to those without energy storage systems, while retired batteries can achieve an additional 5.41 %–11.79 % cost savings under different scenarios. These findings can be generalized that retired batteries are promising in small-scale applications due to the relatively low refurbishment cost, and a new market stream can be potentially generated in this direction.