Chevy Volt Battery Pack Lights Up the Block

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by davedehetre

Curious as to what ever happened to the Chevy Volt battery pack that’s supposed to be replaced every 10 years? Let me ask you another question… Ever get upset when the lights go out due to a power outage? How’s this for two birds with one stone – the extracted Volt batteries can be used to power the lights in your house when there is a power outage!

Sounds pretty crazy – a battery powering the lights in an entire house!? But according to Chevrolet, who teamed up with Duke Energy, packaging five Volt lithium-ion batteries into a single unit could give approximately two hours of electricity to 3-5 average U.S. homes.  The power from the unit outputs 25 kilowatt-hours of power and 50 kilowatt-hours of energy.

“This is an industry first to be able to do secondary automotive batteries in a grid-based application,” said Pablo Valencia, GM’s senior manager of battery life-cycle management. “In many cases, when a Chevy Volt battery pack has reached the end of its life in an automotive application, only 30 percent or less of its life has been used. This leaves a tremendous amount of life that can be applied to other applications like powering a structure before the battery is recycled.”

There will be testing in a North Carolina neighborhood this coming year to see how the Volt batteries work as a back-up energy source in real world settings. Talk about effective recycling as a means of preserving resources!