GALP launches second life project with BeePlanet and BMW

The Portuguese energy company GALP which is involved in several different areas in the battery value chain, from lithium processing to recycling, is launching a second life concept together with Spanish second life specialist BeePlanet and German car maker BMW. The energy storage system, installed in a 20-foot container, has a capacity of 368kWh. The system will be used to support EV charging stations, being connected to two 180kW chargers, which can consecutively charge up to nine vehicles using the minimum power from the grid.

The project constellation with GALP as a user, BeePlanet as system integrator and BMW as a provider of batteries is a logical commercial context where the most important benefit of second life batteries, the elimination of investment in batteries, is fully utilised. While the companies don't share any details about how and why the batteries have been decommissioned this is still a key question for both growth potential and underlying economics. Car companies don't typically own EV batteries (they were sold with the vehicles) but can either only offer batteries from test and pre-series vehicles, or old and often damaged batteries that have been collected due to end of life with no other buyer than the OEM that is ultimately responsible to take them back.

GALP has 5,000 operational charging points in Portugal and Spain which should provide some potential for expansion.

Both Bee Planet and GALP have plans for pre-processing of batteries in Spain and Portugal with Bee Planet in cooperation with Korean company Sungeel and GALP with equally Korean-owned SK Tes (link to details above).