Coquitlam company announces battery breakthrough

As more electric vehicles take that last highway exit, EV batteries pile up like yesterday’s cellphones.

The batteries are sometimes like an old string of Christmas lights: perfectly usable except for one bad bulb that left the whole string in darkness.

In a factory between United Boulevard and the Fraser River, a team of Simon Fraser University grads takes those piles of EV batteries, twists out the bad bulbs, and frankensteins the leftover battery components into one big power source.

Moment Energy recently announced its Luna battery energy storage system was the first safety tested system with product level compliance made up of repurposed lithium-ion batteries.

The key issue for the company was proving the system – which adds backup power, stores leftover energy, and boosts the grid when demand is high – was as safe, “if not safer,” than a standard system, explained Moment’s chief product officer Gurmesh Sidhu.

But after a range of company trials including “destructive testing,” Sidhu said they were satisfied enough to provide a 10-year warranty on their systems.

Besides reducing the demand on a power grid, the systems will also extend the life of EV batteries.

The company’s approach should be a “new industry standard,” stated the company’s chief technology officer Gabriel Soares.

“We’ve proven that repurposed batteries can be long-lasting, energy-dense, and highly scalable,” Soares stated in a release.

The notion of a scalable energy system is critical, Sidhu explained.

Unlike that string of Christmas lights, the system should be able to essentially work around a problem.

“If you have a car in the slow lane, we’re creating a second lane on the road for other cars to pass it,” Sidhu said.

The company has plans to work with B.C. Hydro, taking advantage of the Crown’s corporation’s energy storage incentive program.

Some of the battery energy storage systems are bound for Vancouver Island, local commercial businesses, and greenhouses, Sidhu added.

“When we built this business, we never thought we’d be deploying a lot of batteries in B.C.,” he said. “It’s great to have a footprint in our own backyard.”

The company collects batteries from more than 20 manufacturers. And while there have been some concerns about the EV market flagging, that hasn’t been a problem at Moment Energy.

“We still have way more batteries than we can deal with,” Sidhu said.

After starting up in Port Coquitlam, the company moved to Coquitlam. Moment Energy also received $20.3 million from the United States Department of Energy to help fund an expansion in Texas.

In 2024, the company announced a deal to provide fast charging for YVR fleet vehicles.