A Japanese company that reuses electric vehicle batteries in second-life energy storage systems has become the first to be certified to UL 1974— an evaluation standard for repurposing batteries.
4R Energy Corporation, a joint venture of Nissan Motors and Sumitomo Corporation, is the first company worldwide to receive the certification from US-based international testing and certification organisation Underwriters Laboratories (UL).
UL 1974 was published as a bi-national standard of the US and Canada in October 2018. The standard helps identify a battery’s state of health and introduces ratings to determine the viability for their continued use.
UL said the process “validates performance” of second-life batteries so they can be used to provide a “safe, reliable, clean energy source” for energy storage systems.
Jeff Smidt, VP and general manager of UL’s Energy and Power Technologies division, said 4R Energy’s certification would “help accelerate the application of recycled and repurposed batteries both as a back-up energy source and storage for energy generated by clean, sustainable sources”.
The 4R Energy electric vehicle battery recycling facility opened last year in Namie, Japan.
Nissan said the batteries recycled and refabricated at the factory will be used to offer “the world’s first exchangeable refabricated battery for electric vehicles, and would also be used in large-scale storage systems and electric forklifts”.