A leader in the EV battery recycling business has announced a new use for those batteries: powering AI data centers.
Redwood Materials has launched Redwood Energy, which will use used EV batteries to store power from solar arrays. That power can then be used to power the data centers of Redwood’s partner in the project, Crusoe, a firm best known for its large-scale data center campus in Abilene, Texas.
Redwood Materials collects over 20 GWh of batteries annually — the equivalent of 250,000 EVs — representing about 90% of all lithium-ion batteries and battery materials recycled in North America. During its collection efforts, the company has discovered that many of the batteries it recovers still have a significant amount of life left in them — with more than 50% of their capacity remaining. The Redwood Energy project aims to put those batteries to productive use.
“While those batteries could certainly be recycled, it makes more sense to put them to second-life uses for as long as possible, since producing a new battery takes more energy than continuing to use an old one,” Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry Insights, a Detroit-based transportation research and advisory company, explained in a company podcast.
