– These are old car batteries. You normally find these batteries in the Nissan Leaf, says Jonny Ålgård. He shows off his new investment in the house: house batteries. The batteries are installed in the garage and are topped up when electricity is cheaper at night. As the electricity price goes up in the morning, the family drains the batteries with the cheap electricity instead of using the usual electricity supply in the house. When electricity prices are as high as they have been in the past year, there are a few kroner to save. – A few thousand Swedish kroner have been saved. This takes a number of years to save up, but I prefer to invest some money to reduce the fixed expenses. And I am convinced that it will pay off in the long run. Ålgård has chosen to have two battery cabinets with 32 kWh battery capacity. In addition, he has acquired a solar panel on the roof. It also recharges the batteries when the weather permits. The total price tag for everything is well over NOK 400,000, including electrician. – I believe that this is a sensible long-term investment, he says. Had a car with a short range The story of how Ålgård ended up with house batteries made from old electric car batteries starts with entrepreneur Ibrahin Chavez in Tananger. He was frustrated with the range of his old Nissan Leaf and decided to buy an extra battery for the car. When he got the battery home, he was told that his plan would never pass an EU inspection in Norway. Ibrahin Chavez, CEO of Smart Power. Photo: Ole Andreas Bø / news The battery was put up for sale online, and the next day he got rid of it. – That’s when I thought there could be business in this, says Chavez, who at the time worked at Halliburton. At first he sold batteries. Then he learned to put the car batteries together and connect them to the house and solar panel. Today he is CEO of Smart Power and has a house battery as a full-time job. – Due to the high electricity prices, many customers will install batteries in houses and cabins now. The company is doing very well, says the entrepreneur. BATTERIES: Many types of car batteries can be turned into house batteries. Photo: Ole Andreas Bø / news 90 percent of the batteries he uses are from old cars. The car batteries go through several tests before he puts them together and sells them on. He believes the key to success is that he has not specialized in one type of car battery, but can use many different ones. – Future-oriented It is smart to invest in a house battery, says energy advisor Hans-Jacob Guldberg at the company Husråd. – As a homeowner, you get the peaks in the prices smoothed out. You get to even out your consumption, instead of buying when it’s cheap, he says. He believes that house batteries are the future. If everyone had this, they could in theory turn off the power supply to people for periods of time. – There has long been talk of getting greater capacity in the main lines, but imagine having many thousands of small power plants around the city. Then not so many thick wires are needed, he explains. Hans-Jacob Guldberg, energy consultant. Photo: Hanne Høyland / news Guldberg points out that the regulations are currently such that it can be challenging to get electricians to install such batteries in people’s homes. – If you are going to use used parts again, can you guarantee that? These are the dilemmas they face, he says. Nevertheless, he believes that used electric car batteries are more than good enough to be reused in this way, and that the lifetime of the batteries is much longer than the lifetime of the cars. – I am experimenting with the idea myself, but it is about getting the industry on board and that they can use used batteries, he says. Chavez gives a five-year guarantee on the used batteries he converts into house batteries.
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