How used EV batteries might assist gas the AI increase
Reno, Nevada — In a discipline outdoors of Reno, Nevada, sit rows and rows of photo voltaic panels absorbing sunshine.
Beside them are used electrical car batteries below white plastic, whose job is to maintain two information facilities for Crusoe, a synthetic intelligence cloud platform, working day and night time.
“The entire AI business is scuffling with the right way to entry extra dependable energy on a quick time scale,” Cully Cavness, co-founder, president and chief working officer of Crusoe, instructed CBS Information.
That wrestle is actual. As the usage of AI grows, a 2024 Division of Vitality research discovered that U.S. information facilities might swallow as much as 12% of all U.S. electrical energy use by 2028, roughly triple at present’s share.
In Texas alone, builders have filed plans for greater than 100 new gas-fired vegetation, largely for servers.
“Gasoline energy is a good resolution that information facilities are turning to for pace, for pace to megawatts. That is another method to accomplish that pace, however with a renewable energy supply,” mentioned Cavness on why he believes that recycled EV batteries supply an answer that fuel energy doesn’t.
The recycled batteries powering Crusoe’s two information facilities come from Nevada-based Redwood Supplies. The corporate says it recovered greater than 20 gigawatt hours of lithium-ion batteries in 2024, sufficient to energy 250,000 new electrical autos.
On Wednesday, Basic Motors introduced a partnership to supply EV batteries to Redwood Supplies.
Engineer Colin Campbell, chief expertise officer for Redwood Supplies, hates to toss something that may nonetheless work.
“There’s actually little or no flawed with them,” Campbell mentioned of the used batteries. “Like, perhaps they’ve misplaced 20% of their capability. Possibly your electrical car’s just a little bit slower. And in order that’s acceptable that you do not need it in your automobile anymore. But it surely nonetheless works nice. So we simply checked out that and we had been like, ‘Hey, why do not we use it to retailer vitality for the grid?'”
The Redwood Supplies engineers saved the system easy: no pipes and no pumps.
“That is been a enjoyable engineering effort for the engineering workforce to make one thing that’s sturdy, that’s extremely helpful, but additionally very low-cost and fast to place within the discipline,” Campbell mentioned.
The corporate is assured that if it really works right here in rural Nevada, it might probably clone the setup 100-fold.
JB Straubel, a former chief expertise officer for Tesla who based Redwood Supplies in 2017, says the uncooked materials is already rolling off America’s roads.
“There is no sensible restrict that we see on how we are able to scale this,” Straubel instructed CBS Information. “It is one factor that makes us so excited. That is very modular.”
Straubel argues that it additionally sidesteps the dirtiest a part of the AI increase.
“This can be a totally different method to energy the AI revolution,” Straubel mentioned. “We’re exhibiting, you realize, that AI would not must be in battle with the prevailing grid.”
