Aussie startup Relectrify lands high-profile US clients to trial reusable battery tech

Melbourne startup Relectrify has secured a pilot partnership with the US branch of Nissan and power company American Electric Power (AEP) to develop its energy storage system.

The pilot will see the tech applied to electric vehicles, and also utilised to help reduce costs for AEP’s five million energy customers.

The startup was founded to reduce the cost of battery solutions and extend their lifecycles, and also make it possible to re-use old batteries safely.

It’s now engaging with battery manufacturers, integrators and distributors, forming strategic collaborations to bring new battery products to the market.

The battery “not only increases the cycle life (life-span) of a lithium-ion battery by a third, but due to the streamlined system, also dramatically reduces the cost,” Relectrify said in a statement.

The partnerships with Nissan and AEP come in the wake of Relectrify bagging $2.5 million in investment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s Innovation Fund.

According to co-founder and chief executive Valentin Muenzel, the startup is “progressing on its mission of making energy storage affordable”.

The team plans to roll out the technology across residential, commercial and industrial grid applications.

Battery storage is one of the last barriers to the uptake of renewable energy solutions globally.

While things such as solar and wind power are becoming cheaper than energy from fossil fuels, it’s historically been difficult to store. Plus, traditional batteries often rely on a depleting source of raw materials.

Relectrify’s BMS+Inverter allows batteries to be reused approximately 2,500 cycles per battery unit set.

The BMS technology behind the BMS+Inverter product has already been trialled globally by New Zealand gas and electricity company Vector, Nissan subsidiary 4R Energy in Japan, Volkswagen Germany and IBM.

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