Tucked between two massive buildings in the hills of the Nevada desert, 805 retired EV batteries lie in neat formation, each one wrapped in nondescript white tarps — and hiding in plain sight.
A passerby might not realize this unassuming array is the largest microgrid in North America, that it’s powering a 2,000 GPU modular data center for AI infrastructure company Crusoe, or that it represents the next big act of JB Straubel, the co-founder and CEO of Redwood Materials.
Redwood Materials announced Thursday during an event at its Sparks, Nevada facility that it was launching an energy storage business that will leverage the thousands of EV batteries it has collected as part of its battery recycling business to provide power to companies, starting with AI data centers.
The new business, called Redwood Energy, is kicking off with partner Crusoe, a startup Straubel invested in 2021. The old EVs, which are not yet ready for recycling, store energy generated from an adjacent solar array. The system, which generates 12 MW of power and has 63 MWh of capacity, sends power to a modular data center built by Crusoe, the AI infrastructure company best known for its large-scale data center campus in Abilene, Texas — the initial site of the Stargate project.
The scale of Redwood’s battery collection operation is staggering. Redwood said it recovers more than 70% of all used or discarded battery packs in North America. Today, it processes more than 20 GWh of batteries annually—the equivalent of 250,000 EVs. It has apparently been stockpiling batteries that aren’t ready for recycling, with more than 1 gigawatt-hour worth in its inventory already. In the coming months, it expects to receive another 4 gigawatt-hours.
By 2028, the company said it plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale storage, placing it on track to become the largest repurposer of used EV battery packs.
Straubel’s confidence in the endeavor was apparent in every detail of the launch event. To illustrate the commitment of Redwood — and by extension, Straubel — everything about the production, from the lights and music to the projection on the big screen were powered by the microgrid.
“We wanted to go all in,” Straubel said, breaking into a wide, toothy smile. Splashy effects for the event aside, the microgrid setup with Crusoe is not a demonstration project. Straubel said this is a revenue-generating operation, which was constructed in four months, and one that is profitable. He added that even more of these will be deployed with other customers this year.
“I think this has the potential to grow faster than the core recycling business,” he said.Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years. The company, which has raised $2 billion in private funds, was founded in 2017 by Straubel, the former Tesla CTO and current board member, to create a circular supply chain.
The company started …