Endesa gives electric car batteries a second life in charging points

• Under this project, the useful lives of batteries that can no longer be used in vehicles can be extended by using them to store energy.
• Green eMotion was designed to guarantee the swift and successful mass deployment of electric vehicles and Europe-wide electromobility.
• Endesa and its main shareholder Enel together with the local authorities in Malaga have been part of the project ever since it was launched in 2011.

As part of the Green eMotion initiative, Endesa has set up the first ever charging point to include a battery from an electric vehicle. It's an innovative step that will be key to the future of electromobility. It is hoped that tens of thousands of batteries will have a second useful life by 2020.

The aim is to continue to use batteries that no longer have a useful life in electric vehicles by putting them to further less intensive use before they are recycled. For example, energy storage.

Endesa has taken the battery from a Renault electric vehicle and fitted it in one of its fast-charging points. The 50kW battery charges 80% of the vehicle's battery in 15 minutes. The fast-charging point is located in the vicinity of the Malaga company Transporte de Málaga which is one of two Spanish cities to showcase Green eMotion - a project coordinated by Endesa in Spain.

The local authorities in Malaga - a fierce advocate of electromobility as a key component in the development of smart cities and a project stakeholder - have taken part in the construction of the charging point and want to use this innovative charging point to test electric buses. It will charge Malaga's number 16 bus, which will be used in the VICTORIA project, the Endesa project that will develop the first electric bus lane in Spain to be powered by dynamic induction - a technology that means batteries from electric vehicles can be charged wirelessly while on the move.

Dynamic induction has advantages for all stakeholders.  For domestic end-customers, i.e. owners of an electric vehicle, it means a reduction in the total cost of the battery since the residual value will lower recycling costs

For charging-infrastructure operators, known as charging managers, it means that although it is currently in the R&D phase, the goal is for the charging points that incorporate storage to be part of the portfolio of charging point solutions that Endesa is able to offer them as customers, with the advantage that using these types of second-hand batteries could lower their cost.

For example the car park manager, which the most competitive charging point(s) would buy and which include storage, would reduce a car park's operating expenses. How?  By lowering for example the amount of power purchased as a result of reduced peaks in demand - storing energy during lulls and accessing it at peak times, supporting the integration of renewable energy and increasing the capacity of use of the facility.

For electromobility

As part of the GeM targets, at the start of the year Endesa set up 10 charging points which would allow charging to be managed in real time, i.e. modifying the capacity used to charge each electric vehicle. As a result, smart charging started to be managed in one of the demo regions for Green eMotion, e.g. Malaga, where Endesa also has an information centre and control over the Zem2All project - another large electromobility project that is being implemented in Malaga.

Charging management makes it possible to send the biggest available current to the charging points connected to them, optimizing stability and use of the local grid. If demand for the charging current exceeds the maximum current available, the existing electrical supply would fail or slow at the various charging points. Overloads and other grid voltage and frequency-stability problems can therefore be avoided.

Green eMotion

The Green eMotion project was launched in 2011 with a 42 million euro budget over a four year-period. With 42 European partners, the main objective is to prepare the foundation for the mass deployment of electromobility through a series of demo projects across Europe. This enables the creation of a single framework that facilitates the large-scale introduction of EVs based on European standards, and the demonstration of related technologies in the transport industry and the energy and communications industries.

The partners of the Green eMotion project include energy companies and bodies such as Enel, Endesa, the Danish Energy Association, EDF, ESB, Eurelectric, Iberdrola, RWE and PPC; the industrial companies Alstom, Bosch, IBM, SAP, DLR and Siemens; the car producers BMW, Daimler, Nissan and Renault; the city councils of Barcelona, Bornholm, Copenhagen, Cork, Dublin, Málaga, Malmö and Rome; the universities and research institutions Cartif, Cidaut, DTU, ECN, ERSE, Imperial, IREC, TCD and Tecnalia, and the technology centres DTI, fka and TÜV Nord.