Jaguar Land Rover uses electric car batteries to power UK's largest energy storage system

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has ambitiously embraced circular economy principles, announcing it will develop one of the UK’s largest energy storage systems using second-life Jaguar I-PACE batteries.

As part of a technical partnership with Wykes Engineering Ltd., Jaguar Land Rover will develop one of the largest energy storage systems using renewable energy. According to Jaguar Land Rover, a single Wykes Engineering Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) uses a 30-second life I-PACE battery and can store up to 2.5MWh of electricity at full capacity, enough to power approximately 250 homes for one day.

“Our electric vehicle batteries are designed to the highest standards and in this innovative project, working with Wykes Engineering, we’ve demonstrated that they can be safely reused in energy storage to increase renewable energy opportunities,” said Franois Dossa, Jaguar Land Rover’s executive director of strategy and sustainability. “Using 70-80% of the remaining capacity in an electric vehicle battery before final recycling fully demonstrates the adoption of circular principles.”

“We are working with industry-leading partners to develop a complete electric vehicle ecosystem, from battery to charging, to support our net zero transition.”

BESS is designed to decarbonize the national grid and maximize efficiency. Connected with advanced inverters to maximize efficiency and energy supply, each BESS can support the national grid during peak demand times, and can also extract excess power from the grid during off-peak hours for future use.

Currently, the batteries provided by JLR come from prototypes and engineering test vehicles, but by the end of 2023, the automaker aims to provide enough batteries to store a total of 7.5MWh of energy, enough to power 750 homes for a day.

“One of the main advantages of the system we have developed is that the containers are connected to the grid so they can absorb solar energy that would otherwise be wasted when the grid reaches capacity,” said David Wykes, managing director of Wykes Engineering.

“This excess energy can now be stored in the I-PACE batteries for a second use and discharged later. This allows us to put more PV panels on the solar farm and maximise the land area we are using to generate electricity.”

The latest collaboration further maximizes the sustainability of the project, with no additional manufacturing steps or steps required to disassemble the battery modules. The Jaguar I-PACE’s batteries can simply be removed and inserted into the racks in the on-site container.

According to other news, Tata Group invested 4 billion pounds to build a super factory in the UK to provide batteries for Jaguar Land Rover's future models-Tata Group announced that it will build a battery manufacturing plant in the UK to support the company's electric vehicles. The investment is made through Jaguar Land Rover and will provide the division with future models such as Range Rover, Defender and Discovery, as well as cars under the Jaguar brand.

Tata's choice of Britain - Spain was another candidate - is a big boost for the UK, which has been seeking to attract battery makers to build local production capacity. The plant is likely to be located in Somerset, southwest England, and begin operations in 2026.

(Source: JLR Global Energy Storage Network, Global New Energy Vehicle Network, New Energy Network Comprehensive)