Car dealer wants to reuse old Prius batteries for solar energy storage

Toyota dealer Louwman from The Hague plans to temporarily store the surplus of generated solar energy from the 980 panels on the roof of the company building in old Prius batteries. This allows the company to use generated energy at a later stage.

The company Louwman The Hague recently had 980 solar panels installed on the roof of the company building by installer Solarcentury. According to Toyota, this amounts to an area of ​​1600 square meters or approximately six tennis courts. The solar panels would be good for an installed capacity of about 250 kW, good for roughly eighty households.

In addition to the significant solar power installation on the roof, Louwman says it wants to use discarded batteries from Toyota Prius models, the well-known hybrid car of the Japanese brand. The dealer states that these batteries can easily be reused for the temporary storage of electricity generated via solar energy.

The batteries in a Prius are replaced on average after ten to fifteen years and have lost about 20 percent of their capacity. The exact method that the Toyota dealer wants to use for using the old Prius batteries in combination with its solar system is not yet entirely clear. The company does say, together with the Japanese car manufacturer, that temporary energy storage will become increasingly important in the near future.