Mounted between two huge buildings on the hills of the Nevada desert, 805 retired EV batteries are in neat formation, each wrapped in white tarps – and hides in a simple look.
A passerby may not realize that this incredible array is the largest microgrid in North America, supplying a 2,000 GPU data center for Crusoe infrastructure company, or representing the next major JB Straubel, co -founder and Managing Director of Redwood Materials.
Redwood Materials announced on Thursday during an event at its Sparks, Nevada, that a energy storage operation began to use the thousands of EV batteries it has collected as part of the battery recycling operation to provide power to companies. And start with AI data centers.
The new business, called Redwood Energy, starts with Partner Crusoe, a Starubel Startup invested in 2021. The system, which produces 12 MW of power and has 63 MWh capacity, sends power to a hinged data center built by Crusoe, a company known for its large scale Abilene University. Texas-the original area of ​​the Stargate project.
Redwood’s battery collection scale is shocking – and an opportunity. Redwood said it is recovering more than 70% of all used or rejected battery packages in North America. Today it processes over 20 GWh batteries per year – the equivalent of 250,000 EVs.
Obviously it has stored batteries that are not ready for recycling, with over 1 gigawatt-Hour in its stock. In the coming months, he expects to take another 4 gigawatt hours.
By 2028, the company said it plans to develop 20 Gigawatt-Hours storage of a network scale, placing it on the right track to become the largest redefinner of the used EV battery packages.
Straubel’s confidence in the effort was evident in every detail of the launch event. To visualize Redwood’s commitment-and by extension, Straubel-all in the event from music and screening on the big screen in a laser light show that included giant Pac-Man ghosts navigating EV batteries.
“We wanted to go in,” Straubel said, breaking into a wide, tooth smile. The impact on the edge event, the microgrid setting with Crusoe is not a demonstration project. Straubel said it was a revenue business, which was built in four months, and one that is profitable. He added that even more of them will be developed with other customers this year.
“I think this is able to grow faster than the core recycling operation,” he said.
Redwood materials have been in tears of extension in recent years. The company, which has raised $ 2 billion in private funds, was founded in 2017 by Straubel, former Tesla CTO member and today’s board member to create a circular chain of supply.
The company started with the recycling of waste from the production of battery cells as well as from electronic consumer, such as mobile phone batteries and laptops. After processing these dismissed goods and exporting materials such as cobalt, nickel and usually extracted lithium, Redwood supplies the back to Panasonic and other customers. Over time, the company has expanded beyond recycling and descent production. Redwood has generated revenue of $ 200 million in 2024, many of which come from the sale of material batteries such as the catches.
The company’s imprint has also increased, and far beyond the city of Carson, the headquarters of Nevada. He has locked the agreements with Toyota, Panasonic and GM, began to build a South Carolina factory and made a takeover in Europe.
Redwood Energy is the next step-and one that is not connected to the creation of its systems to be off the network. Pensioned EV batteries can be powered by wind and solar energy, or they can be connected to the network. In the case of the Crusoe project, the system is powered by solar energy.
“No green intent is required here,” CTO Colin Campbell said during a browsing to Microgrid. “It’s a good financial option that also happens to be carbon.”
The business model faces a long -term challenge in the field of energy storage. For over a decade, companies have promised to create a storage of a network scale from used EV batteries, but have only been implemented in small quantities. Redwood, which started as battery materials and recycling company, is creating a new line that promises to deliver gigawatts of the necessary energy storage in just a few years.
“This really shows how economical the waste hierarchy is in reality,” said Jessica Dunn, a battery specialist in the union of interested scientists in TechCrunch. That a big recycter like Redwood recognized the potential profit on reinforced EV batteries shows “where this market will go to the end of life,” he added.
Battery reset is a clear business opportunity for Redwood, but it may also be imperative. Redwood was founded to build a supply chain that could handle the intended wave of used EV batteries that would hit the market. But this wave has not been as quickly as some of the predicted.
“If Redwood did not enter the repatriation market, then they would not receive a share of the reinforced battery. They should wait five, 10, 15 years until they retired,” he said. In the meantime, other companies will be able to sell batteries for storage of a network scale by cutting Redwood from years of revenue.
Straubel recognized it, noting in an interview that in many ways Redwood Materials started a little early.
“We started very early and somehow started the Redwood almost too early,” he said, noting that the company initially collects consumer batteries and production fragments in front of the upcoming wave of the UN.
The current recycling market state underlines the challenge. “Right now, the recycling market is mostly by making fragments, electronic consumer and EV batteries that have failed under warranty,” Dunn said. This was enough for Redwood to edit over 20 gigawatt-hours a year. But it is deformed compared to the 350 Gigawatt-Hours in EVS today and the 150 Gigawatt-Hours are expected to knock on the road every year.
Redwood today has a recycling facility on the 175 -acre campus in Sparks, Nevada and is developing a 600 -acre facility in Charleston, South Carolina. The latter will rebuild the descent and rise of copper, both contain critical minerals that the US would prefer to stay within its borders.
The company has previously stated that it would be able to do 100 Gigawatt-hours per year by Cathode Active Material and Foil Foil by the end of this year. By the end of the decade, it expects production to hit 500 Gigawatt-Hours.
