Back when Nissan was doing their dog-and-pony show ("come take a test drive!" in a very controlled environment) for the Leaf (2009), that was their exact spiel for what would be done with the batteries when they were past their prime. Now that the early Leafs are at the point of needing new batteries, I'm curious if Nissan is following through (but not curious enough to go looking.)
Nissan planned the project well in advance of Tesla's PowerWall, but Tesla beat them to market (and brand/name recognition advantage) by building PowerWalls with new stock batteries, whereas Nissan waited for enough car batteries to return second hand from the market before starting their XStorage brand and so far as they have admitted have never sold a new battery in an XStorage.
(It's an interesting factor to consider that Nissan had to wait so long to start their second hand battery use systems. As much, sometimes warranted, flak as Leafs get for battery degradation, the batteries overall have lasted generally longer in "first use" directly in cars than Nissan at first projected, even despite higher sales than Nissan projected for the Leaf. It fits other statistics that EVs are kept by first owners for longer than average compared to other cars, and in general are lasting longer as cars than early EV skeptics predicted.)
Ours is one of the first Leafs off the line, still has a usable battery (if it were still under warranty, it would have one battery bar left before we could make a claim). Living in Seattle probably helps a lot. So, yeah, Nissan might still be waiting on batteries, even from early first-gen. At this point we’ll probably just keep ours until it is no longer usable, or VW releases that electric van they’ve taunted us with (2023, they claim).
It's actually a really cool setup that allows us to take in excess solar (that isn't used onsite) to charge the batteries, the batteries actually act as backup power for the event days (that AFC Ajax plays). When not needed they provide frequency containment (grid stabilization to prevent brownouts+blackouts) for the European electrical grid at large (on days where it is financially viable to do so).
If you have any questions I would be more than happy to discuss more :)
How often does it happen that this is financially viable?
The way the European electricity market is set up is quite interesting, so I wonder how the ArenA-system ties in.
Also, is the system also charging up when there's negative electricity prices like there were recently? And get payed to take in power?
That is very cool, and that was done during the Ghosn pump/dump era no less; as a long time Nissan enthusiast, which then turned being a technician for Nissan for a period I knew Nissan was involved in tons of new tech: Radar based Cruise control was available back in 2002, CVT transmissions, they were one of the first to adopt throttle by wire, and if you've even been in a GTR its more video game than it was car, especially when it first came out.
So these battery's being up-cycled is not so much a surprise, either.
I only recently, like a year ago or so, found out they had Aerospace division since 1953 and even had a facility in Mountain View.
To think this the same company that was insolvent in the crash of the Japanese Bubble era of the 90s, they really did try to expand into to so many sectors, much like Yamaha, but didn't really get the same notoriety because of it. In fact most non car people, especially in Japan, will recall their real estate holdings collapse alongside the Nikkei index, which was really their core business.
It's dark days for Nissan right now, and as a die-hard Nissan fan boy I hope they separate from Renault and make it out of this as their transition to a more EV lineup manufacturer is looking promising, as does their I2V technology but it shows how first-mover advantage can be destroyed from within by short-sighted crooks like Carlos Ghosn (that is a wanted fugitive in Japan after fleeing in some crazy movie-like scenario with ex green berets [1]) and the complicate delivery systems and dealerships that created horrible incentives.
