Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - 2nd life batteries

0:00Transcript

0:00Wonderful. We can get started. I would like to start out by thanking everyone for being here this morning, as well as a bit of an introduction into Battery Insiders. Battery Insiders is a podcast run by Battery Associates. We talk all things batteries. So in previous sessions, we've talked about everything from data to supply chain and so on. And today's topic is extremely relevant to that conversation, because it addresses the circular economy related to us actually transitioning towards a net zero world. With us is Edward Chung. He is the co-founder at Moment Energy. And I will give him the floor to introduce himself. But in a nutshell, they repurpose EV batteries in order to develop energy storage capabilities. Edward, do you want to give a little bit of an introduction and into yourself and into the topic that you'd like to talk about today? Yeah, for sure. I would love to jump right in. Thank you so much for having me. I've been definitely listening to a lot of episodes and yeah, just seems like an amazing community and also excited for some of the questions. For example, sounds like Milo is a celebrity here at this point. So I'm Edward Chang. I'm a co-founder and CEO at Moment Energy. We're actually based out of Canada. And pretty much what we do is we repurpose electric vehicle batteries for renewable energy storage. So what I'll talk about today is general things in terms of just the process of repurposing EV batteries, the market need for repurposing EV batteries.

2:00How does it all work? Sometimes there's a lot of question marks there. Hurdles in terms of solving both technical and regulatory problems in terms of repurposing and also what markets make sense for second life batteries as there's so many different types of energy storage out there and each one has their own great qualities and market need. So with that, I'll kind of just get started. A little bit of background is we started this company about three years now in Canada. It was co-founded by four Megatronic Systems engineers and now having grown from four, we're actually a team of 28, currently working with four Tier 1 automakers as well as a couple more that are looking to join our fold. So really the greatest need to repurpose electric vehicle batteries is because, well, we've probably seen the studies, there are going to be 200 gigawatt hours a year of end-of-life EV batteries that have no home. And really what started this for us and our passion is here in Vancouver, we saw that when a consumer buys a Chevy Bolt, for example, and they want to recycle that battery, it costs them thousands of dollars to do so. And it's really because currently there is no regulation in terms of who's taking responsibility of these end-of-life EVs. So unfortunately, the consumer is the one that's putting this bill. Well, the silver lining is that across the world, China is actually one of the most progressive, but in half of all you countries as well, South Korea and Japan's following suit as well, they have regulation already that the automaker has to take responsibility of their own end-of-life batteries. Unfortunately, as automakers typically do not want to foot the couple thousand dollar bill for recycling, majority of them, 95% of EV batteries are not being responsibly recycled.

4:03As we've pretty much heard in other podcasts as well, the reasoning is because the process for pyro and hydro metallurgy is, hydro especially, is better in terms of extracting material, but it's just an extremely expensive process. And in terms of profitability, it's going to take many, many years before we can just drop off batteries for free, just like lead-acid batteries. And also, as we transition into less profitable chemistries like LFP, it's going to be a while until we can responsibly create that full circular economy. So for us at the moment, what we saw is, well, what's the point of throwing these batteries away? What's the point of even recycling these batteries in the short term when we can, when there's an average of 80% life left and we can actually repurpose them for another 7, 10, 15 years? So for us, we're really seeing that there's great value and there's certain markets where repurposing EV batteries make a lot of sense. Another major market trend is that currently new lithium manufacturers are having an extremely hard time finding lithium material to create stationary storage. So when you talk to new lithium manufacturers, right, if you talk to cattle, LG Chem's out there, there are a lot of North American and European companies as well, especially in the commercial industrial market, but also in the utility scale market as well, and for a factor, there's, they're already announcing that they're sold out for the next year, two years, three years.

5:40And really what they're seeing is that a majority of the lithium material is being sold into electric vehicle batteries rather than into stationary storage. So it's extremely hard for the stationary storage market to compete and therefore not enough batteries for us to transition into renewables as we are installing more solar, more wind, and connecting them into cities, facilities, remote communities. And as more and more electric vehicles are hitting the grid and everybody's charging their electric vehicle, it's putting a lot of stress there. So really what's the process of repurposing electric vehicle batteries? So typically, and especially in countries that have regulated the end of life of batteries are taken by the automaker, typically the automaker is telling the customer, Hey, you know, because we have to take responsibility, they probably frame it as, Hey, we don't want you to pay for recycling. Just drop off your end of life electric vehicle. Once you're done with it at the dealership, then the dealership will send it to their established end of life facility.

6:47And the automaker themselves will take apart the batteries from the pack level into modules. Then they'll test individual modules and say, Hey, okay, these ones are good. These ones are about above 50% state of health. These could be repurposed or shelved, and these ones are bad. And we're going to recycle them if they're below 50% state of health. The good ones essentially are then sent to second life players like ourselves, while the bad ones are then sent to recyclers. And, and the testing process here is actually really important, especially for second life companies like us, because it's really important to have put batteries that are homogeneous in the same pack. So we want as many 85% state of health batteries into the same stack, rather than having it all mixed and having a 62% state of health and a 90% state of health into the same stack. Getting into it in a little bit, we have talked about in the past that when you connect batteries of very differing state of health, the whole system is dragged down by the lowest quality batteries. So even if you have 95% of your entire system are 90% state of health batteries, but you have one 60% state of health battery within that system, then the whole system is going to act like that 60% state of health battery, which is not good. So this is why this testing portion is extremely important. And then when the batteries reach moments and reach a second life company, we will do our internal tests as well, just to validate that the automakers are giving us the supply that they promise. We then grade them and then finally integrate them into stationary storage.

8:31So for us, these look like cabinets and are decently small. So for us, a 60 kilowatt hour cabinet looks like a one and a half meter tall, one and a half meter wide and a couple feet, one and a half feet deep system, which is pretty small in terms of powering multiple homes. What we found is, you know, a Tesla Powerwall typically nine to 14 kilowatt hours for one residential home, but we've deployed an off grid residential homes where we're the grid forming element and all they really need is about 20 kilowatt hours. So now with our minimum size factor of 60 kilowatt hours building blocks, it's pretty big and we can address pretty big power needs. And then finally, of course, once we're done integrating the whole process, we will deploy them onto the customer sites. So for the not all OEMs really have this full process of taking in batteries from the dealership, disassembling them and testing them. And that's exactly why we're partnered with a lot of these OEMs.

9:35And these are typically OEMs that are they have they're very new to the game. Europe has a lot of good traction in terms of research and development already, which is great. And especially again, the regulations have already mandated that automakers take responsibility. A lot of these facilities have already been created. But in areas like in North America, where automakers are pretty new to creating electric vehicles in general, but when we talk to them, they're not even thinking about the end of life. They're not even thinking about recycling. They're not even thinking about second life. They haven't really created these processes. So what we're doing now is they've asked us to help them with R&D. We take in test batteries from them, especially when they're newer vehicles, maybe they've only been on the road for one or two years, or they have test fleets, and we can tell them if their batteries are repurposable or not. And we're developing pilot projects and and deploying their batteries across North America. So it's really cool in terms of the development of these systems. And we are seeing that automakers are are leaning more towards second life rather than recycling, again, because of the high cost. But two is because they're seeing a lot of value in in these end of life batteries, rather than just recycling them. Because of the high demand of stationary storage as well. So for example, we've probably heard that NIO in China, they've already created swappable batteries as a core element to their electric vehicle. One is to extend the range and and as batteries develop and battery chemistries improve, then it's really easy to swap in and out from an old battery to a new battery. But this makes it a lot easier for the second life or end of life supply chain as well in terms of getting batteries that come directly from EVs. We're also seeing players like Nissan who have already been who've established their own second life facilities already across the world and who we actually work with. But they've also been experimenting with a lot of cool technology like vehicle to grid. And then finally, we're also seeing a lot of OEMs actually looking into leasing their batteries as well, as they're seeing a lot of values within the battery at the end of the life of the vehicle. So they're actually leasing these batteries to the customers and they they want to retain the battery by the time that the customer is done with their their their battery, five years, eight years, 10 years, which is super awesome. So getting into it. So what are the some of the hurdles both on the technical and regulatory side for repurposing? So for the technical value chain, typically it's you have to do the battery testing, repurposing and then deploying. So one major aspect of it is disassembly. It's going to going through this, it's going to take a whole village to to really push off these end of life, the end of life battery and second life battery market. And luckily, we've been seeing a lot of partners and a lot of great companies pop up here. So disassembly, again, currently, the automakers are doing their own disassemblies, but it's costly, it takes time.

12:46A lot of it is majority of it is actually manual right there. There are technicians that are taking these packs and disassembly them into modules and doing the testing physically. But we've also currently seen a bunch of startups that have popped up in terms of using robotics and vision to disassemble these batteries easier, therefore reducing the costs here associated with end of life. Then we're also seeing testing companies come up as well, where companies are developing faster methodologies, faster strategies to test grade these batteries so that they can quickly be sent to integration companies like Moment as well. So then there are companies that are popping up that are actually physically doing repurposing rather than disassembly and focusing on testing, taking these batteries that have already been tested, doing their own validation, but really focusing on that deployment aspect, which there aren't many companies that are that are doing and but we're seeing more and more coming up. And what's really important here is actually a company being able to actively manage these batteries. These batteries that have different state of health that are often from differing auto manufacturers. These batteries that are not all 100% state of health that come right off the factory need to be actively managed. We essentially need to be watching how the batteries are degrading over its lifespan of 7, 10, 15 years, and then putting more stress or less stress on the individual modules depending on how they degrade. So then in terms of regulatory hurdles, especially mainly talking about North America, there's an entire UL certification process. So there are three, four main ones, UL 1974, 1973, 9540 and 9540A. Majority of them, the last three are essentially required for all stationary storage in general, even if you want to create your own lithium stationary storage company by battery cells from China and integrate them. But 1974 is really the main hurdle for second life batteries.

14:53So it's been extremely difficult for any second life player, any testing company, any integrating company and manufacturing company like us to get 1974 because they put a lot of first life regulatory rules on second life batteries. So luckily we are working with UL. So we are hopefully helping the entire industry be able to more tangibly get this UL certification. But that definitely requires a lot of partnership between UL, the automaker and ourselves. Why is UL important? Well, without UL certification, it's essentially impossible to commercialize second life batteries. You can be doing a lot of pilot projects, you can be sitting in labs. But ultimately, if your goal is to make a profitable and scalable business, you're going to need UL certification so that you can hook onto the grid for the on-grid markets. But also, even if you're within off-grid and the customer owns their own grid, then you need UL certification to ensure that their insurance is not voided. So what we're seeing now is the reason why we've slowly become a larger and larger player. Well, I guess it's not slow. It feels pretty quick now. A larger player in North America is because, again, in China, in the EU, and other countries across the world, these mandates to repurpose or recycle have already been in place for a while now. But the U.S.

16:31has been moving towards this as well, and they're passing this bill. So we're seeing a lot of European, Asian, and even North American automakers really see this moving forward and why they've chosen more local players. So what we're seeing in terms of the industry is it's going to make a lot of sense where there are going to be Second Life companies across the world and it's important for these Second Life companies to be close to the supply of batteries as they're going to be electric vehicles really in every continent out there. So for us, we're seeing ourselves as champions within the North America first, and we're seeing a lot of great players and partners across the world as well. So really, the final couple aspects is what makes sense for Second Life batteries. We want markets here, right? So what we're seeing is especially when you're repurposing EV batteries, EV batteries that are typically, although lithium, which is the same as typical stationary storage, in the EV, a lithium battery experiences five to eight times more stress than a typical lithium battery for a home or for a building. So these are high C-rated batteries. So for us, what we're definitely seeing in terms of markets and where it makes sense is short duration markets, where markets that need batteries that can discharge within an hour, two hours, rather than a battery that can discharge over 10 hours or 20 hours. So what makes the most sense? So in North America, especially, this is the commercial industrial segment, where the commercial industrial segment can also be split into two halves and where we're working on as well. So what we've been deploying in is on the first half is off grid. Off grid, these are remote communities, mining sites, aquaculture sites, where they have these huge diesel generators and 20 hours in the 24 hour day, they're just wasting fuel. The diesel generators are really just operating at 20% output, while diesel generators like to output at 80%. You can think of it as a throttle. So unfortunately, majority of this fuel and energy is just being wasted turned into heat. So what Moment can do is really create energy storage, plug in with the diesel generator and almost create like a hybrid car. So even when you have energy storage plus the diesel generator, you can, without really trying, you can reduce the diesel consumption by 40%, which is extremely great for GHGs and the environment, but as well, it's great for the cost of the site overall. And as these off grid areas who are typically in the middle of, you know, the beautiful woods, we're in British Columbia, so we have the Pacific Northwest mountains, we you don't want something that's polluting everywhere and, and super loud. You want to be able to transition to renewables. But unfortunately, the sun only wants to come out when it wants to. So solar and wind has been extremely difficult without energy storage. And really, the main solution that they have been going to has been lead acid batteries, which is pretty crazy. So lead acid batteries have only hundreds of cycles, which means that as these off grid sites are charging and discharging, in other words, cycling these batteries multiple times a day, if not every day, that these batteries last a lot less than the 10 years that that these lead acid battery companies are promising them. At the same time, within commercial industrial, the form factor is very similar. We can address the on grid market. So these are manufacturing buildings, commercial buildings, EV charging infrastructure, where, especially North America, but also in Europe, and especially in Germany, there, the demand for power, and as we transition more and more into renewables, and as more and more individuals are transitioning into electric vehicles, the demand for power has greatly increased over the history of our society. So unfortunately, when, but fortunately for the transition into electric vehicles, but unfortunately for the grid, when 10 people are all charging their EVs in a neighborhood, that grid is literally about to fail in the neighborhood. So because the transformers are not specced out for that, therefore, smaller scale energy storage rather than football fields, gigawatt, or megawatt, tens of megawatt hours of energy storage is needed, you actually only need hundreds of kilowatt hours, a smaller form factor in a neighborhood to to support the demand there. But also across all these areas, their demand charges, and how that works is when globally, when everybody's using too much power, and a given amount of couple hours, one or two hours, typically, then utilities here in Canada and North America say, okay, if you're going to use power in the next two hours, we're going to immediately charge you up to $300,000, which is pretty crazy.

21:23So unfortunately, commercial industrial buildings can't just turn off their facilities for one and two hours. There are software systems out there that can predict when these peaks happen, but they're not going to, although they know that a peak is going to happen, they're not going to turn off their entire facility for that given amount of time. And that's really where energy storage can make sense as well. Energy storage, again, and behind the meter in a smaller form factor, below one megawatt hour, makes a lot of sense where you can install it within the building and serve those demand charges totally cut off from the grid for those given one hours, two hours, up to four hours, and then really save on demand charges as well. For each commercial industrial building on average, we'd be able to save about $600,000, which is pretty crazy. So really, what is Moment doing here at Moment Energy? So for us, we are working directly with automotive OEMs. Again, they're incentivized because they do not want to pay for recycling. They have expressly said that, unfortunately, due to the high cost, they just prefer not to, which is not great. At Moment, we believe in a circular economy, so we want to extend the life of these batteries for as long as possible so that when recycling technology becomes more and more profitable, that economically we can really ensure that these batteries don't end up in areas like landfills or are sitting on shelves for years and years, especially when batteries have a shelf life. For us, we are developing energy storage systems specifically for the commercial industrial markets for now. So this is 100 kilowatt hours to 5 megawatt hours in form factors. So you can think of it again in cabinet sizes all the way to a couple shipping containers. And then we have so far deployed many projects off-grid throughout Canada. So these are in off-grid residential sites where they have diesel generators, solar, hydro-connect turbines, where we can really reduce the diesel consumption there and ensure that that diesel generator, especially in the summer, never turns on. And while also working within off-grid commercial industrial, so these are again remote communities where they have multiple homes as well as projects with the Department of National Defense who are really trying to create sustainable solar energy storage type systems to support their efforts there, mainly for humanitarian reasons when there are disasters.

24:04And then we're also doing projects within on-grid commercial industrial as well, working directly with utilities, serving those neighborhoods where there's too much power that's being drawn from charging EVs at home or just demand in general from commercial industrial. And we're actually helping utilities in front of the meter to help with their demand there. So I have also been talking for a while now, so I would love any questions in terms of if anybody would love to chat more in terms of what's the whole process of repurposing and what are maybe some considerations that we're making? So fantastic. And maybe let me just quickly jump in as well. Thank you so much for really providing amazing. I think, you know, a lot of material for thought and lots of material for questions as well. And I think you have a really exciting overview of kind of, you know, some of the current market for regulation technology as well. Maybe let me just quickly jump in and also now invite everyone to kind of get engaged and kind of a bit of a recap of Clubhouse.

25:08Everyone who's listening to this live right now, you can get involved by please joining us on stage. So just raise your hand and we're happy to bring you on. There's also amazing, very knowledgeable people in the audience. Some of them I'm fortunate to know. So if any of you want to come on, we really, really love that as well. And then, yeah, if people want to, if you get a lot of people, maybe I say a few more things, how to coordinate if you have many speakers, but I think for now we're okay. And yeah, also as Mariam already has done, there's also a chat function. So if any of you wants to ask any questions or any additional thoughts or links, etc. You can also put them in the chat. That's another way to communicate. So, thank you. Is this Mariam, is there anything, any question you might have to kind of kick us off or want me to go? That was an amazing overview of the entire process. Thank you so much, Eddie. A couple questions just regarding the threshold for what you would be, what you would consider a good cell or a good state of health life threshold for a second life application. You'd mentioned 85%. Is that the threshold for, for what would be considered a good cell for use of repurposing?

26:27Yeah, great question. So there have been lots of studies that have shown that any batteries above 50% on average state of health is pretty good. But for us, there's just been a huge supply, especially as we work with four automaker partners already and more are joining. We're quite overwhelmed by the amount of supply that they're trying to give us. So we're allowed to be a little bit more picky. So although generally the research has shown that 50% is pretty good, okay, we typically are saying that we don't want to take in batteries anything below 70% just because we can be pickier. Now, again, on average, the state of health of these batteries are 80%. But even with the high quality of supply that we're getting now, we're, we're getting them above that. So in the near term, we can really just deploy these high quality batteries that are above 80% state of health. And then we understand that, especially as more and more batteries reach end of life, right? When you drive an electric vehicle, no matter where, let's say in Arizona, in the United States, where it's really hot all the way in Norway, where it's really cold up north, the batteries will degrade very differently where we're going to get a lot of 80%, but then also a lot of 60%. And that's when we're continually developing our technology and the battery management system to be able to manage these greatly varying batteries.

27:50But for now, we don't, it's not extremely necessary because the quality of batteries are extremely good over the next, let's say three to four years. But what's interesting is actually, and I personally don't know too much about it. I've only just read one study on it. But there are companies out there that are and research out there that's proving that there could be a third life for batteries. So once Moment deems and companies like Moment deems that these batteries are done for our, have reached end of life for our application, there are even less intensive applications out there for a third life, such as, you know, when they're extremely low cycles, even at Moment for commercial industrial, a facility will cycle maybe 20 times a year, if you really just want to target the global adjustment and the global demands. But then there are areas like backup power, where typically barely cycles once or twice a year, where there are some companies and mainly researchers that are seeing that there's an opportunity for third life, which is cool. Fantastic. Maybe I cannot get to this. And I think the third life question is super interesting one, I think it's a super excellent point. Maybe I can do one quick question as well. I think it's super fascinating, you know, the overview, right? I think you also kind of there's two kind of narratives that you provided was one, I think, you know, the business case and kind of the, you know, the use case of stationary battery systems. And I think that, you know, makes all sense. And I think it's quite impressive. Some of the numbers you shared. And then of course, you know, the question about second life, right? Where the batteries are, what kind of batteries are using for it? Are you going to use fresh batteries? Are you going to use second life batteries from EVs?

29:37And I think I have two questions because they also came up in previous conversations we had, which was interested in your take on that. On the one hand, I'm trying to kind of break them down. That probably could be three questions. I'm trying to do it to not go too many. So I think one is, of course, of the cost question, right? I mean, you can maybe say now, let's say you get, you know, battery cells, let's say, you know, from these companies for free, essentially, or for good pricing. But of course, the question is, you know, now you get, let's say 10 year old EV batteries, right? Because it's hope they last a long time in the EV, you know, and you would maybe get them at some discount, but also the new batteries, probably be quite a bit cheaper, let's say in 10 years time again, right? So just kind of thinking about, you know, reduction and battery pricing, will you still kind of foresee how to kind of compensate for that? And then I think also kind of a sub question to this would be, I think kind of, you know, now you mentioned, you get all these automotive companies providing those, you know, batteries, you have kind of more and more supply that you can wish for, which is absolutely incredible. But of course, the question is, then how would you scale something like this, right? Because as far as I don't know how it is in Canada, but I would assume that people own their EVs, so they would also own their battery. And then you as a, you know, as a battery owner, you probably want to get the most value for it. So which say, if you, for example, can sell it right to different people, or for recycling, because you know, maybe, you know, you get something out of it, etc, depending on what chemistry is in there, if you're again, might be a bit more tricky. But so how kind of do you get, you know, scale, how would you get the batteries on the consumer rather than the automotive company? Great questions. As we're talking about costs, I think that especially when we're talking to customers and to the market, that's probably the most important question that always pops up. And you're absolutely right, of course, right now, when we're getting batteries for extremely, either for free or extremely cheaply, or we're getting paid to take on these batteries as well. That might not last forever, right? The projections in terms of new lithium costs always continually going down has been pretty staggering, definitely has wiped out some other incumbent battery technologies already as well. But what we're seeing, and of course, this year, it could be a blip.

31:50And at moment, we definitely see that we, we don't want to just say just because this year battery, especially lithium costs has gone up, that that's going to go, go on forever, we're definitely preparing for while reduction in new lithium prices as well. So for us, what we're really seeing is not to compete on price only, but it's really to be able to target markets and deploy in markets where the quality, again, the high discharging capabilities of the EV batteries are, are actually the main forefront. And that's actually exactly why we're not targeting utility scale just yet. Utility scale, for example, we're installing 20, 30 megawatt hours into football fields. All they care about is costs, they don't really care about anything else. While again, for commercial industrial, there are many differing additional benefits such as power, short duration type work, as well as ESGs. Carbon accounting is, has, has essentially, at least in North America is, but we believe that Europe is actually even more progressive, is coming up, right? So especially commercial industrial facilities out there are taking, and are really taking in account where is the lowest CO2 battery? How do we actually transition to renewables? And, and finally, the main thing is, of course, this could all change as we develop our supply chains, but it's been extremely difficult for people to buy any new lithium, which is interesting.

33:29So we're seeing actually mainly because all the lithium is going to EVs. So a lot of the new lithium installers out there, like these huge like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is the renewable energy group rather than the vehicle group, or integrators out there who've installed gigawatt hours of energy storage over just this past year, are all interested in Second Life now, mainly because they're also projecting that the supply of first life for stationary storage is extremely dwindling. And that's, again, there are all these batteries, there are 200, 300 gigawatt hours of it, end of life EV batteries, that that is only going to be growing so that they can actually meet the demand for energy storage. So what we're seeing, especially as we're talking to customers, is that they're willing to pay more and more for batteries because just the scarcity of stationary energy storage, which, yes, if the cost of our, our supply from the automakers do increase, then we believe that the markets, especially in commercial industrial, will be willing to pay for batteries a little bit more in terms of sustaining those margins as well. One aspect that Moment is using to tackle this as well is to sell it by throughput.

34:46So rather than selling at a one time sales model, right, just selling the asset to the customer, especially within the on grid setting where we're reducing their demand charges and and also helping utilities with their energy needs, we each battery acts like a mini utility where we sell throughput of the energy to the customer rather than just, again, the entire system too. So all those things can really help with with combating the costs there. So and then to address your second question, well, how do you really centralize that value chain rate? We're seeing as of right now that the automaker is the best way to centralize that. We are seeing second life companies buying battery packs from auto wreckers, buying battery packs from really just anywhere that can get them. We think that that's not the best idea because even our customers want to know that the automaker themselves have have at least touched them and have tested them and have validated these batteries are safe.

35:46But that value chain is definitely going to could increase when, you know, more of these testing companies come out. If these testing companies that have done really great jobs in testing batteries in terms of quality and safety start licensing out their technology to auto wreckers, to consumers to deem if the battery is safe or not, then that could definitely create a secondary market essentially where the consumer can take response can then potentially sell their batteries rather than giving it to the auto automaker. Right now, what we're seeing, though, is is the consumer doesn't have those resources to really deem that that battery safe. And if you buy a battery from another consumer that you buy off of we've seen people buy Nissan Leaf batteries off of eBay. Unfortunately, that those batteries can never be certified because you essentially need batteries that come from the auto manufacturer, the right, correct data as well from the auto manufacturer to get UL certification in North America. Yeah. So once we kind of get over that hurdle, then that's when I think a more deregulated type battery supply can happen.

36:59And that's why we're also working already working with recycling companies. So as we know, LFP is the bane of all of recyclers existences. So but and so right now we're essentially working with them where we can supply each other. So once our batteries reach end of life, we will always recycle our batteries to really create that circular economy. But at the same time, they're getting a huge supply of batteries where they just can't manage. So they are also selling. If not, we're doing contracts where we promise to give the batteries back after our end of life back to the recycler as well. Speaking of recycling, Mark, do you have a question? Yes. Thank you, Mar. Eddie, I appreciate your talk about your company and your technology. I'm very interested in this particular topic as I'm passionate about Second Life recycling. So from what I understand in our in your conversation or to efficiently use Second Life, all the batteries have to be the same cathode chemistry, state of health, form factor, to sort of certify them in an appropriate Second Life stationary grid storage.

38:17And then also, if you talk to the recyclers like JB Straubel, say Second Life doesn't make sense. At least that's what he said publicly. Maybe he says something different privately. If you talk to Second Life people, they say any battery could be appropriate for Second Life. I was just reading a paper saying that the carbon footprint improvement in Second Life LFP for 10 years, the synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic synthetic Yeah, really great question. Yeah, I think there is always going to be a debate between like, oh, second life and recycling. I think both camps are just trying to get as much supply as possible. But then behind closed doors, they're saying like, oh, yeah, we really just like recyclers are going to be saying we really just want NMC.

39:26Hey, moment, please take our LFP from us. But yeah, in the end, it's going to take a village. And that's kind of our way. I guess we take a more central stance. It's going to take a village, right? Not a single recycler or industry is able to is going to be able to take in the huge amount of EV batteries that are going to reach end of life. And not a single or even entire industry of Second Life will be able to take that. And we got to all work together there. In terms of the homogeneous part, just to clarify, you're absolutely right. What we do is we we aim to match in batteries. They don't have to be exactly like, for example, all batteries are 85% state of health together. We do have to match chemistry for sure. You're absolutely right there. But we don't have to match state of health. But we like to mainly because, again, if you have a very differing state of health there, right, one that's very low versus the rest that are very high, then the whole system will be bogged down by that lowest state of health.

40:27But I mean, there's already technology that we're developing where we can actively manage that. So really, in the future, we're able to take in batteries of very differing state of health and manage it where it's not bogged down by that lowest state of health battery. In terms of the differing in terms of chemistry, that's actually the hardest part, right? I think a lot of a lot of battery researchers, we've been looking into how do we mix chemistries and and at least that moment into the next five years, we don't have plans to put in like, for example, an LFP and NMC battery into the same cabinet 60 kilowatt hour cabinet. But for us, we've we're developing the technology where especially coming out by the end of 2023, where we're able to take in batteries from different auto manufacturers. So and we can connect them all together into the same overarching system. So what does that mean? It means that within like an entire shipping container, a one megawatt hour system, we can have 90 percent of the batteries or all of these 60 kilowatt hour stacks are, you know, from Nissan.

41:31But then we'll have a couple of those stacks from different auto manufacturers like just name a random one like Hyundai. So then that the reason why we are creating that technology and of course, like you were saying, to really ensure that the lowest carbon is being emitted. But but for us is actually for supply. So what we've seen over the past past 10 years is 10 years ago, second life companies popped up. Well, 10 years ago, they kind of failed or fizzled out mainly because there wasn't enough supply. Right. EVs barely even existed, let alone an end of life supply. So they weren't able to scale up into a multibillion dollar business that the majority of the startups plan to be. But now for us, even when we just started this company, we always knew that supply is going to be the greatest challenge. So building technology where I'm flexible enough where we can take in batteries from any chemistry, any auto manufacturer. When I say sorry, when I say any chemistry, I really mean lithium chemistry is our main focus for now.

42:34Any auto manufacturer is going to be extremely important so that no company is going to be supply constrained. And that's why exactly why we have all these automotive partners that are working with us to help with that R&D, to be able to take and put in batteries of differing chemistries into the same overarching system. Again, they're not going to be in the same pack. They're going to be connected on the AC bus there. Thank you, Eddie, for your answer. I learned a lot and it will help the conversation. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. It's very interesting as well. Please go. The idea of recyclers and integrators partnering. Sorry, can you guys hear me? Because I have really poor internet at the moment. No, you're good. Okay, perfect. We've got some questions in the chat, actually, Eddie. So why don't we take one of the questions that Mackenzie asked. Does the process change or have different challenges for solid-state batteries? Great question. So we actually do, and that's actually one of the majority questions that people ask us as well.

43:48Like what happens as EV batteries change, right? Like as we transition into solid-state, as we transition into all these other cool chemistries that are coming out. And what we're seeing is in the long-term vision, again, creating that flexibility. That's always been the core tenant at the moment, where being able to take in batteries from any auto manufacturer, even slightly different chemistries of lithium batteries is going to be extremely important there. The long-term vision, especially with the battery management system, where we're training it on real-time data rather than kind of just sitting in a lab and training on batteries is that we believe that we would have, over the next five to 10 years, especially when solid-state batteries do hit the market, that we'll be able to be the best battery management system period. Because managing batteries from differing state of health is a very extreme case. But then managing batteries of differing chemistries and differing auto manufacturers is also a very extreme case as well.

44:46So with all that data, in the short term, over the next three years, we believe that we'll just be the best second life battery management system period. And then over the next five years, we'll be the best BMS period, where currently new chemistries like zinc, for example, or solid-state, right? They are using battery management systems that are very similar, if not the exact same as what new lithium battery management systems are using. Essentially, they're very passive. It's pretty crazy where, you know, you have an engineer that looks at a graph and they just predict, oh, yeah, over the next 30 years, I'm just going to draw an S curve. And over the next 30 years, I predict that this battery will degrade in this way. And that's it. There's no active integration. There's no active management or anything like that. Nobody's even seeing what the state of health of the battery is. It's all input manually. So what we believe is as new chemistries come out, on the hardware and electrical side, we're very confident that we can adapt, especially as we're making these great partnerships and they're already giving us test samples of the batteries for us to test.

45:56But then on the software side, on the management side as well, we'll definitely already be better than buying an off the shelf, you know, passive battery management system, because we're at least actively managing them. And in terms of the product, we just believe that it's really cool that electric vehicle range and safety is also increasing. So as the battery development in electric vehicles increase and quality increase, we believe our product will also be increasing as well. Fantastic. Thanks so much, Eddie, for sharing this as well and explaining on the product. And, Derek, great to see you. Any thoughts, any questions you might have? And, Derek? Hi, there. Oh, there you are. Yeah. Can you hear me well? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me here. No, great. Great talk, Eddie. Unfortunately, I didn't hear it from the beginning, but very interesting. I mainly have some questions in terms of, you said you get most of the batteries from the OEMs, which I also think is a very good idea.

47:17But why do the OEMs possess these batteries? Good question. Could you elaborate a little bit about, I mean, are these in warranty batteries? Are they replacement batteries? Are they test on R&D batteries? Because, obviously, the huge amount of batteries that we will see in the next 10 or maybe even more, obviously, 20 years will be more real and life batteries. And the OEMs usually don't possess the batteries. It's the owners of the vehicles that do that. So, could you elaborate a little bit about how? And also, you talked about that you have a lot of supply. Could you give us some guidance? What is a lot of supply for you? Sure. For sure. Yeah. Good question. So, I'll address the second question first. So, in terms of even with one out of the four automakers that we're working with, we have about 100 megawatt hours a year of supply. And then, again, we have three additional ones. So, that's kind of just a little bit of a snapshot.

48:19That's more than a startup can really handle over the next two years, let's just say. Now, with that, why do they reach end of life? Well, again, in terms of regulation, especially in Europe, but also, well, not the entirety of Europe. It's like half of EU's countries, in China especially. And then, the United States is passing this bill soon. It's putting that responsibility on the regulation. It's putting the responsibility of end of life batteries on the automaker. So, really, especially with the high cost of recycling, we're seeing that consumers cannot afford, for example, in Vancouver. It costs $4,000 to the consumer to recycle and get rid of their EVs, which is pretty crazy. So, the consumer can't afford that, right? That's pretty crazy. So, the regulation is essentially being put in place where the automakers will receive these batteries at end of life. Of course, there are going to be a lot of vehicles that are still in the market. They're going to still hit auto records.

49:18They might – the consumer might even want to retain the battery to try to sell it on the aftermarket as well. But we believe that the automakers are also moving towards seeing an opportunity of, hey, these batteries are – they have a lot of value at the end of them, right? We'd rather not recycle because of the high costs. But we can actually resell them to second-life companies like Moment because the stationary storage market has just been begging for energy storage overall. And the supply for stationary storage is extremely dwindling. So, right now, in terms of the short term, we have been seeing a lot of vehicles that reach – depending on the auto manufacturer, we've seen vehicles that have reached full end of life after about five years, eight years. Especially when we look at countries like Norway, we're seeing that consumers are still trading – and again, I'm sure you guys already know, but in Norway, half of all the vehicles on the road are already electric.

50:20And they're seeing consumer trends are still that they trade in for a new vehicle in general every five to eight years. Be it because of combustion vehicles, they like the new interior. They hear that Tesla came out with the better, faster car. So, that is one major factor there. But, yeah, a lot of them could be test vehicles and also warranties as well. We are seeing a lot of – especially in North America – a lot of warrantied-type batteries. Batteries that essentially degraded quicker in the electric vehicle than expected. So, then the automaker has promised like, yeah, we'll just take these batteries out of the vehicle and put in a new one for you. And then also, again, with the hundreds of megawatt hours in energy storage, a lot of them are also test vehicles as well, where they've been on the road in secret for about three to four years rather than 10 years. So, as we're seeing this really large supply of good quality batteries in the near term, in the long term, we definitely expect that that range, especially when the batteries come from vehicles that have been on the road for 10 years, 15 years, be different in state of health than the ones that we're working with now.

51:37And which is why, again, that battery management system is extremely important in the long-term vision and sustainability of Second Life companies. Okay. Okay. Yeah, very interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Maido. Hi, how are you? Do you pay for those batteries? And if you don't pay for those batteries, how much? At all? Yeah, good question. Yeah, good question. So, currently we do pay, well, it depends on the auto manufacturer. So, with essentially half of our partners, we do pay. And the reason why we pay is because they do the disassembly and they do the testing. So, they're giving us really good data in terms of what the state of health of the battery is, even data on how the battery performed within the vehicle, which is all just extremely important when we're continually training our battery management system. So, we are willing to pay for them. Obviously, we can't talk about exactly how much we're paying for them, but it's like cents on the dollar.

52:43Like, it's pretty marginal in terms of how much we're actually paying for them. While there are some OEMs where we get the batteries for free, and if not, we're currently in contracts where we're able to charge them as well. And those are situations where the automakers are essentially sending us batteries direct from the dealership. They do no disassembly. They just send us like a pack, pretty much. They do no disassembly and they also do no testing on it, where we will have to do the testing in-house. So, there's no guarantee that the entire pack will be good for repurposing. But again, if we're getting these batteries for free and or charging them, you know, $2,000, $3,000 rather than what they were originally already paying $4,000 here in Vancouver for recycling, then we believe that the cost associated with this assembly and also retaining, you know, let's say 80% of the battery, whole battery pack is repurposable is just a way for us to be able to make money and create a sustainable process.

53:46So, yeah, unfortunately, the answer is it's a little bit of a wild west out there and we pay and we also get pay get batteries for free and or can ask to get paid for these batteries. I have a follow up question. What's your cost of repurposing those batteries? Good question. Yeah. So as of right now, especially when we're not at scale, right, we were actually developing our our large 30,000 square foot manufacturing facility in September, but not at scale. We're we're currently about all in. So this is with like inverters. This is with the energy management system, everything. It's currently about $600 per Canadian. So it's actually less dollars per kilowatt hour, which we understand is is high for utility scale, right utility scale. They essentially are aiming for $200 or $200 American per kilowatt hour. But within the commercial industrial, especially because commercial industrial really, there aren't many players at all that are playing within the sphere where like even originally before the supply constraints, nobody has even been able to supply, you know, between 100 kilowatt hours to two to five megawatt hours and form factories for commercial industrial.

55:13We're seeing that a lot of new lithium companies in this space are charging upwards of $1,200 again Canadian dollars per kilowatt hour, which is pretty crazy. Thank you very much, I think super helpful. Also, thanks for for these kind of transparency with the numbers. I think that really helps for this discussion. Absolutely. If there's no other follow up on this right now, Milo, maybe we can go to the next one who's obvious, maybe you have a different name. But yeah, nice. I think you have a question in the chat if you want to ask that. Hey, good morning, guys. How are you doing? Good. Yourself? Doing good. I'm a robotics engineer working at a company near Rivian in Illinois. Cool. And I had a quick question regarding your projected growth and how you will pivot past the point where supply overtakes demand. And what's the stage after that? Yeah, that's really good question. So essentially how we're going to pivot in terms of our projections, we're seeing that that supply in terms of overtaking demand might hit, you know, in foreseeably, it's going to be really hard to project that mainly because as more and more people are are up taking energy storage.

56:36And the growth in terms of the energy storage market has been 25% year over year so far. But in the case in terms of when that happens, let's say it's almost like everybody has solar panels on the roof already. And now everybody has energy storage in their homes, residential homes and their commercial industrial sites. Even we have gigawatt hours of energy storage within, you know, the city of New York has been asking for huge projects like that. When that happens, let's say in the next couple of decades, that's really where the long term vision of the battery management system makes a lot of sense for us, where we believe that we've collected so much data on training on very extreme differing state of health of batteries and again, different chemistries. And at that point, you know, not just lithium on zinc on solid-state on bromide and all these other chemistries that we would be able to tackle the entirety of the energy storage market period.

57:38Be it if it is within stationary storage, the vision is even assisting with EV automotive data sets as well, especially with our current automotive partners. They're extremely with our partnerships. They ask us, hey, like, what is the data that you're getting for for Second Life? Because then it helps them train their own onboard BMS as well and and also for the vehicles and also helps them in terms of dictating warranties and lifetime per vehicle. As a really long term vision, we really just want to be energy storage experts just period. No matter if it's in a vehicle in stationary storage and really assisting with the transition into renewables. Yeah. Thank you so much. And my recommendation, if you can get into the industrial aspect of battery storage, because that's what I'm working in and steel refurbishing, you'll make a lot of money. Good luck with that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, we also also really believe in things like refurbishing and everything as well.

58:44That's super cool. And again, it's going to take a huge village with like everybody in this chat is going to, I'm sure going to be working together for for decades in terms of trying to help with this major climate issue. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Eddie. And yeah, I think before we go to SM maybe just a quick reminder because we know about one hour in, which means you have about 30 minutes left for anybody who joined in the middle of it. No worries. You can find the recording either on this app afterwards or battery insiders podcast, which you can find on Spotify, Apple podcast and anywhere else where you listen to your podcast. Maybe also just a quick ask if you enjoy these kind of discussions, especially also the podcast, you can leave us a comment or like or rating in any of these platforms that really helps us to also be, you know, to spread the word. And we know lots of really amazing people listen to this podcast to this recording.

59:40So really appreciate for you to help us spread the word because it really helps us to grow the community, which I think is also in everyone's interest. With this, maybe SM, would you like to be next? Yeah. Hi. Great, great presentation today, Eddie. I really enjoyed it. One thing I wanted to ask about was you mentioned or you touched upon it a little bit early on the importance of having a good SOC that you use to essentially sort and determine what gets repurposed together. And we're seeing a serious issue with either OEMs or or even integrators that come to us saying, well, it's costing us too much to determine what that SOC is and what to do with it. And it just hit home when you're talking about like 100 megawatts of capacity that you get cycled through. Is the go to strategy that you fully discharge, fully charge and just how much energy does that process take? And how big of a problem do you perceive it to be as well?

1:00:55Yeah, it's going to be a huge problem. So for us, like when we get the batteries, right, we get them in modules. So depending on the modules, right, Nissan ones are pretty small, but then with the European ones, they're quite large, right? They're the size of a table. And and depending on the actual use capacity, let's say let's just pretend that each module is 20 kilowatt hours each. Right. It's going to take hours for you to fully discharge and charge it, even when we have a lot of cyclers on site. But even when you have a lot of cyclers, that process will take a lot of time, which is exactly why we believe that, again, there are a lot of cool companies out there that are developing really fast, but fast, but also accurate testing methodologies. So like cool startups that are doing that, for example, if you guys look into a ritual here in North America, they're they're pretty small startup, but they claim that they're creating they've created a process that can test within minutes.

1:01:56That's pretty crazy. So like we would actually love to work with companies like that, because for us, our core competency is in testing. Ours is integrating and and developing second life energy storage systems. We just need that snapshot to be able to categorize faster. Same with another Canadian, sorry, American company called Titan. A. Yes, they've gotten a lot of news recently because I think they raised the series B, but they they're using cool technology that they claim are essentially ultrasound, which is pretty awesome in terms of, you know, trying to look for dendrites and looking for accuracy of how the batteries, the state of health of the battery right when it comes out of the vehicle. And then we have more traditional battery testers like S&T again out of North America. A lot of I'm going to be talking a lot about North America, obviously, but who are more traditional and they're going to be testing in a more traditional way. It might take a little bit longer, but that's just the process it is.

1:03:01And what we're seeing is when we have companies like Rejewel, Titan popping up and saying, hey, a moment. Like, do you want to do you want to kind of beta test our technology or we were more than glad to because we believe that they're either going to be partnering with us or they're going to partner directly with the OEMs so that that cost majorly decreases for them. And that's really the same in terms of kind of what I mentioned at the beginning of the call. Like there are also now battery disassembling startups that are coming out as well where they're using robot arms and automation to essentially disassemble the batteries. So massively decreasing the cost of of of that value chain as well. So again, I say this a lot, but it's definitely going to take a village. Right. We're going to need the battery testers. We're going to need the disassemblers and we're going to need the integrators like us to to really create the entire market for for Second Life repurposing.

1:03:59Perfect. Thanks, Eddie. In the interest of time, I'll I'll touch base with you offline. I have a follow up a couple of follow up questions that I'd like to get your take on. Yeah, I would love to. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. And Mary, are you going to go next? Yes, I know we had a couple of questions in the chat, but Esteban has come on stage. So maybe we'll go Linda next and then Esteban after that. And then we've got the question in the chat. Oh, thank you so much for having me up. Eddie, I'm fascinated by all the things that that you're enlightening me with or telling me I'm so enlightened. I have a question. I'm interested in buying a new car. I want to get an electric car. And I have someone that I know that's had a car since I think 2012, the original battery. Yeah. So it seems like they can. He has a Tesla and it seems like that it has a really long life on it.

1:05:08My question is if I were considering getting a used car with somebody like returns their Tesla or some other electric car to the dealership. If and then buys a new one, say, do they just take the batteries out without even because they want to sell it with new batteries? Or I guess my question is, how come there's, you know, where do these batteries come from? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So there are some OEMs that are thinking about that. Right. Like in the beginning, I was talking about that Chinese company, NIO, where they're doing battery swapping. And yeah, like that can because we kind of all know that EVs there aren't as many mechanical parts than a regular ice vehicle. So the maintenance and the lifetime of the motor and all the internal workings is much longer, which is awesome, which is also why we think it's like the battery is generally the Achilles heel. And it's the thing that's going to degrade the fastest within the vehicle and why it's unfortunate if right now, unfortunately, because automakers aren't really thinking about it.

1:06:16Once the battery degrades, then they're just going to get rid of the whole vehicle, even though, you know, the motor and the rest of it still works. So so really, as we're seeing more and more automotive companies think about that and realize that, hey, you know, the whole vehicle is actually working fine. Like, let's actually just replace the battery so that for a use case, I start a used case, it would last longer. Like, I think OEMs are thinking about that right now, but they just haven't implemented on it. So again, at least at moments, then like when they do swap out that battery, then that's when we get the batteries out. We are hearing the same thing. Like often we hear that the original Teslas have lost a long time that that majority has to do with like the chemistry that they're using, like their NMC chemistry and which are extremely long life and good quality, especially for the high power needs of the vehicle.

1:07:08In terms of a whole used market, if there is no battery swapping, the used market is is still a question mark for EVs mainly because in terms of the batteries sitting inside the electric vehicle, it experiences, like I mentioned earlier, five to eight times more stress than a typical lithium battery that's sitting in a building. And the battery doesn't like that. So what we've been seeing, especially getting data from the auto manufacturers, let's say an accelerated case that you see that after five years of driving your electric vehicle that the range decreases by 20%. Now, for a lot of people that could just mean like, oh, yeah, that's no problem. I can still drive this car. But also for a lot of people that can mean I can't get to work and back anymore. So that could trigger, OK, maybe I need to get a new EV now. But the problem is because it's in this high stressful situation in the electric vehicle, it's not going to take another five years for another 20% of your range to drop again.

1:08:14It's really only going to take a couple extra years to do so due to again being in a very stressful environment. So again, like I kind of agree with you, like for a used market, battery swapping makes a lot of sense so that we can extend the lifetime of these vehicles and not need to scrap all that metal and electronics and plastic. But then make sure that that that customer gets a very good quality battery every time that they purchase the used vehicle. That would be ideal. Thank you. Yeah, I guess the thing is, I was wondering, too, if I get a used car, more than likely it would be the original battery that came with the car. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's where right now there's a question mark there because there aren't many electric vehicles that have lasted, you know, more than 15 years, let's just say. And especially again with like the Tesla batteries, the batteries there have been, especially as they were the initial ones, Tesla kind of just put all the R&D and all the great, great chemistries in there for it to last as long as possible.

1:09:25But now Tesla has switched into LFP batteries, for example, and all the mainstream automakers now have have also been seeing, hey, what's actually needed for an EV rather than over engineering. Let's just engineer for a standard lifetime of a vehicle. So there are still question marks on if batteries will, how fast they're going to degrade over the next 10 years. Especially if you buy like a new vehicle right now, like a Nissan Leaf right now or a Ford Mach-E right now. Yeah. So I would say that I'd keep an eye on it. I can't advise you in terms of your purchasing decision right now, but I would say that that is definitely one consideration. And if your vehicle will really last another 12 years, the honest answer is probably not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Linda, and maybe Esterman, would you like to connect? Esterman, are you with us? Otherwise, maybe we can start by asking his question for him and maybe join us a bit later as well.

1:10:50I think his question was about the difficulty of scaling up state of health estimation using kind of counting, capacity testing, how to address it. I mean, it goes a bit in the direction, I guess, already asked by some, but maybe there's anything you want to add on this, Andy? Yeah, exactly. Of course, for us, again, we don't do the testing portion. Like we do inadvertently do testing and have accidentally developed good technology and processes to do testing mainly for validation purposes. But it is a major issue. I totally agree. And I guess to just add on that is mainly there are a lot of great companies out there that are developing faster ways and to economically do testing on these batteries. And that's when we we work together in terms of testing these batteries as fast as possible. For us actually still it's as accurately as possible. We want to we always prioritize safety over speed, especially. But we believe that over the next five years, 10 years, that that's not going to be a problem in terms of speed and safety.

1:12:03Fantastic. Thank you. Also, for anybody else from the panel has any other thoughts or questions? I got one if you don't mind, Simon. Please. Yeah. So you probably touched on this because of earlier on, but certification of batteries. Yeah. How does that work? And are you willing to kind of work with the U.S. government on this side of the border? Yeah, we are actually working with the U.S. government. So it's mainly UL that we're working with. So, yeah, just to recap, there are four standards that generic standards, of course, are smaller ones, but they're four core ones that you'll require. It's UL. So UL is the underwriters laboratory. It's essentially in North America. It's the main one. And then, you know, for Canada and then also for Mexico, we kind of just follow like we have our own boards, but we just follow whatever UL says. If UL says, OK, then everybody else says, OK. So essentially, therefore, standard certifications, UL 1973, which is pretty much the standard for batteries for use in stationary vehicle auxiliary power and light electric rail.

1:13:14So LER applications. That's pretty much all not just Second Life, but all stationary storage needs to go through it. UL 9540, which is energy storage systems and equipment, requires it. And then UL 9540A is standards for test method for evaluating thermal runaway fire propagation and battery energy storage systems. Those are all all three of those are very standard. So you can think of them majority as product certifications. Right. You essentially have UL inspectors come in, make sure that and we're going through that process right now where every single portion of the battery pack is safe. If one portion of the battery pack fails, it doesn't trigger anything negative on the other systems and you just have enough redundancies to make sure that it's as safe as a battery system as possible. No matter if you buy battery new lithium batteries from China or if you do Second Life batteries, all systems need to require this. But the key thing for Second Life is UL 1974.

1:14:18So this is a standard for evaluation of repurposing batteries. And this is actually more of a process type certification. So right now, Moment is pretty much scheduled to be the first in North America to get this certification. And you can think of it as certifying an entire facility. So it's the sorting and grading of the battery packs and modules. So that one is once we take in the batteries, of course, they're taken from the OEMs and they come into into the facility. We can take that data, which helps with the sorting. But we also will do our own testing real quick just for validation and so that we can grade the battery packs. And then there are nitty gritty things like tracking the temperatures and how you store them and whatnot. And then it goes all the way into integration, following the safety procedures of integrating these batteries into stationary energy storage. And then finally, the final testing as well in terms of just passing that standard.

1:15:25And once you get nine, 1974, you essentially have a facility that can churn out batteries that are certified, UL certified, and you can hook onto the grid. Now, the hardest part actually about getting these certifications for Second Life Company and that we've run into, but we luckily more or less have circumvented. What we've done is UL requires data sheets and data from how was that EV battery manufactured even before it was put into the electric vehicle. So the only way that you can get this information is either direct with the auto manufacturer or, you know, the manufacturer of the cells, which is LG Chem and cattle and whatnot. So, which has been extremely difficult, right? Majority of the Second Life companies out there aren't partnered with OEMs. They're working off of auto records or buying batteries off of eBay. We've seen, which already we don't feel like is a very safe thing to do. But when they do things like that, they're it's impossible for them to get end of life battery.

1:16:37Sorry, this UL certification. So for us, we because we have so many partners, they are walking us through the certification process. But then at the same time, we are actually influencing UL right now in terms of because we've deployed many battery packs commercially already. We know what it takes to build a safe system and what makes sense and what doesn't make sense in terms of what you all should expect repurposing companies to to have and to be able to get you all certified. So we essentially are helping with the slight rewriting of the certification so that more people can obtain the certification as well. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely. I'll look for ways to kind of provide value for your startup and your business around my area, I guess, Chicago, Illinois, Caribbean. I have a lot of friends in that company. So if they reach out to you, hey, I'm happy about that. And we're making a difference. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you so much.

1:17:38Eddie, that's such a huge edge to be able to actually rewrite some of the standards and certifications. So that's awesome to hear. We have a few questions actually in the chat. So Mo asked a question. He said, let me just pull it up here. Which battery technology has the highest depth of discharge? Good question. Well, I mean, even within the electric vehicle, right? There are really two main ones that are out there, NMC and LFP. Even Tesla for themselves, they've announced that, hey, it is okay for you to have a greater depth of discharge. And charge the batteries all the way to 100%. And then bring it all the way down to zero. That obviously shouldn't happen because you don't want, it's just like a vehicle. You don't want your gas to go to zero. But essentially for us, depth of discharge is mainly a consideration internally. It's actually less so for the customer. We deploy our battery packs very similarly to what the EV manufacturers deploy at.

1:18:55If the limit is, let's say, 10% to 90%, and you don't want to be anything above you, right? You don't want to overcharge your battery to 95%, and you don't want to undercharge your batteries to 5%. The moment actually, we actually downsize that even more. So we bring it to, we actually physically bring it to 80% to 20% depth of discharge so that we can extend the life of the batteries. But also, you know, no matter what, the customer can't over or undercharge the batteries there. It really helps in terms of lifetime of the battery. So what does that mean? That essentially means that the total usable capacity for the customer decreases. But then that's really why we chose the form factor and the batteries that we have right now. In terms of we, on paper, we also over spec the battery. So we tell them like, hey, you're getting a 60 kilowatt hour battery. But in reality, they're actually the battery and the amount of battery modules that we're putting in there is above that 60 usable capacity.

1:20:07So those are methodologies in terms of extending the overall health and ensuring that no matter what the depth of discharge of the NMC or LFP batteries are that you can use them for as long as possible. Thank you, Eddie, for answering that question. Another question from the chat is from Theo. He's asking you to provide insight on EV vehicle to home reverse charging and also where you can predict it's going for residential applications. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, I'm not an expert on V2G. I just know a lot of friends that have actually startups that are doing it as well. But then also I've only just read a couple of papers on it. But my personal view on it is I like it. I like it a lot. I like how especially as I was mentioning, like for us moment where we are supporting utility grids right in front of the meter. We didn't think we would be, but it turns out that they have a huge need because, again, when 10 people are all charging their EVs at the same time, that grid is literally about to fail because they draw they're drawing too much power from that grid.

1:21:20So now when we have things like vehicle to grid, it's less so about, you know, trying to make money on on selling energy back to the grid. I think that's I personally care less about that. I care more about how the benefits of of us transitioning into renewables and how it impacts that. And I believe that when we have more technologies, when if we had energy storage for every home, right, then we can really decrease the stress on that grid. So as more people are installing solar and installing other assets or more people are adopting EVs. Right. It's super cool that you can actually as a consumer, let's say you have a Nissan Leaf. Your neighbor just bought Nissan Leaf too. Now, with your Nissan Leaf, I can you can discharge from the vehicle into the grid to support the high power demand. Of course, maybe for you, since you're selling it back to the grid, you're making a little bit of money. But ultimately, what it means is now when your neighbors are all buying EVs and they're all charging, you're discharging, but they're charging.

1:22:25That essentially supports them in terms of allowing more and more electric vehicles to hook onto the grid and more people to transition into electric vehicles. And so that the grid doesn't have to panic about how their grid is about to fail. So personally, I like V2G. That's super awesome. I think there's a lot of creative ways to implement it as well. The main thing that it's constrained to is probably the automaker. If the automaker is actually willing to build in V2G within their vehicles, we are seeing some automakers do it. But that's the hardest part. Right. So a lot of V2G companies that pop up, they they just need to convince the automaker to adopt their technology, which is difficult because in the end automakers are quite conservative. So there might only be a couple of companies that really break through the market, I can imagine. And and for you to break through the market, I would say is you really just need to prove reliability to the automaker.

1:23:25You need to actually deploy projects in real life, not just not just deploy them in labs to really show that your systems work. And fantastic. Yeah, thank you so much for for so I'm so decent business. We're pretty much at time, you know, time always keeps to kind of fly away. I think there might be one more people hence race. I think you have to go up to stage shots. So just look at the time. I think, you know, we're pretty much at the end. But I just want to say a massive thank you to Eddie. It's young for joining us today. I think it was a super insightful session and really, really appreciate when people share, you know, lots of information. People share, you know, lots of numbers and insights. So yeah, so thank you really. This was really insightful. And as you can see from your profile, you're rather new to Clubhouse. So maybe if people like what he said today, you can also give him a follow there.

1:24:16Maybe we can incentivize him to stick around a bit more. Or maybe also, he probably can also be found on LinkedIn for other people to follow up with you. And I think it sounds like going to some some people are going to follow up with you right after. Perfect. Perfect. Yes. Thanks. And then also maybe just one quick thing to say as well as part of wrap up. And as you can see from the title, this is the 49th session of these. We have done quite a few in the past. We have done them every week. Last year, this year we're doing monthly because we realized we also need some weekends. But it has been a really, really great experience. And so, yeah, we do another one in a month time. As you can then imagine, this will be the 50th session. So we'll be thinking about how to maybe make this extra special. So yeah, if you want to join us for that, or if you have any ideas who we should try to bring on, what kind of format we should create, please get in touch.

1:25:09We're always interested in any suggestions of great speakers. And we have also had some really great ones in the past as well. And as you can see, you know, as mentioned earlier, this is recorded as part of the Battery Insiders podcast organized by Battery Associates. And I'm also having to be one of our amazing ambassadors as well. It's been great. Other people here in the audience too. And yeah, if you want to listen to any of this, you can just do it again for free on Spotify, other podcasts, other platforms. And you can also find lots of other interesting sessions from recycling as well, the recycling side and regulation and different kind of circular approaches. So there's lots of content there. If you enjoy this or any of our programs, we organize these batteries as well. But better and beyond these kind of things, please don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested to learn more about any of these exciting things we are doing.

1:25:54With this, we pretty much add time. Eddie, anything you want to share on the end? Otherwise you can develop. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Really, I've just been binging this entire podcast, been loving the questions in the community. Just kind of wrote in chat. But if anybody wants to connect, you can just find me at Edward Chang. Put it down there. It's the same profile picture. And then also my email is also in there. Edward at moment energy dot CA. Amazing. Thanks so much. And also, Matt, thank you for my arm to organize this co-hosting. With this, we see each other in a month's time. So again, first Saturday of the month. See you all then. Bye bye. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you so much. Wonderful room. Thank you so much.