A fast classification method of retired electric vehicle battery modules and their energy storage application in photovoltaic generation

The fading characteristics of 60 Ah decommissioned electric vehicle battery modules were assessed employing capacity calibration, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and voltage measurement of parallel bricks inside modules. The correlation between capacity and internal resistance or voltage was analyzed. Then, 10 consistent retired modules were packed and configured in a photovoltaic (PV) power station to verify the practicability of their photovoltaic energy storage application. The results show that the capacity attenuation of most retired modules is not severe in a pack while minor modules with state of health (SOH) less than 80% bring about the retirement of the whole pack as a result of the buckets effect. There is no obvious correlation between capacities of retired battery modules and their lithium-ion diffusion coefficients or charge transfer resistance or ohmic resistance, whose reliability is low as the consistency indexes of decommissioning battery modules. The maximum off load voltage difference Delta U-max at low state of charge (SOC) values has a good negative linear correlation with the capacity of retired modules, suggesting that the Delta U-max value at low SOC values can be considered as a characteristic index for fast classification of retired battery modules for large-scale second-life application. A PV power station equipped with retired battery energy storage system (RBESS) can maximize the photovoltaic self-utilization rate. It is an important way to reutilization of retired battery that RBESSs are configured with distributed PV power stations.