This startup from Aachen is giving old e-car batteries a new life
No time right now?
What should you do with all those car batteries when they have had their day? The startup Voltfang wants an answer to this question.
A young startup from Aachen wants to kill two birds with one stone, solve two problems with green electricity: It wants to produce a cheap electricity storage device for solar energy and to recycle decommissioned car batteries. Sounds like a win-win situation. What is the Voltfang approach?
The idea for Voltfang came from three students of the RWTH Aachen: Afshin Doostdar, Roman Alberti and David Oudsandji. They made friends at the beginning of their studies and bought a camper van together. When they were out and about with their camper, they quickly noticed that the mobile’s battery was insufficient to provide the three of them with permanent power during their trip. A solar system had to be on the roof – a solar system plus electricity storage.
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The idea came up while camping
Alberti is the engineer among the three founders. “He’s such a doer type,” says co-founder and friend Oudsandji in an interview with t3n about his friend. Alberti built the PV system himself on the roof of the camper and worked on an alternative to the lead battery for the electricity storage system. Finally, the realization came: the old battery of an electric car is wonderfully suitable as a storage medium. The idea too Voltfang was created.
With this idea, Dootsdar, Alberti and Outsandji came up with the Start-up grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia advertised – and ultimately received it. A short time later, the first prototype of the energy storage system was ready, the first Voltfang. The startup is now actually using discarded batteries from electric cars for power storage. The batteries should still have a remaining capacity of eighty percent of the original charge capacity when they are recycled by the team. So enough to be used for a few more years. Voltfang’s goal is to double the life of the batteries.
This is what Voltfang’s home storage system could look like. (Photo: Voltfang)
The market is still quite young
The topic of second-life batteries is still quite young, but the startup is not entirely alone with this approach. For a while now, the big players in the industry have also been working on an approach for second-life batteries. BMW, Bosch and Vattenfall started a joint project in 2018 in which battery modules from old BMW models were combined to form a large power storage unit. The difference to Voltfang, however, is that the established companies use their electricity storage in the primary control energy market. The startup focuses on commercial and home storage. In the electricity storage market for private households, Voltfang is currently mainly competing with providers of new battery modules, such as Tesla’s Powerwall or Sonnen’s energy storage system.
The startup is currently in the middle of the certification phase for industrial storage, and production is scheduled to start in a few months. In the next year, the Voltfang for the home should also be ready for the market. The startup plans to close the first round of financing in April. The founders are still looking for investors for this.
The founders rely on sustainability
Voltfang’s claim is like that of many young startups: sustainability. The founders want to promote the circular economy and make their contribution to the fight against climate change. This mission is what drives Voltfang, because, says co-founder Oudsandji: “We all have to do something for the energy transition.”
