EVwire brief: Redwood Materials is building large-scale intelligent microgrids for AI data centers, hyperscalers, and heavy industry, with its partnership with Rivian serving as the blueprint.
Under the deal, Redwood recovers EV batteries from Rivian and is deploying energy storage systems directly at Rivian's manufacturing facilities. The effort builds on the 10 MWh second-life system already at Rivian's plant in Normal, Illinois, which Redwood describes as the first storage system of its kind at a US automaker's factory.
Redwood is pitching the setup as a faster route to power than the grid itself. New grid connections can take years, and equipment like inverters, transformers, and switchgear is caught in the same supply bottlenecks as the rest of the energy buildout.
Redwood Materials shared its plans for intelligent microgrids on X:
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Rivian's role goes beyond hosting a storage system. The automaker's service centers across the country double as natural collection points for batteries coming out of service, according to Redwood, with the company recovering that material and routing each pack to the right stage of its life.
Redwood's pitch rests on owning the whole chain, with the company building its own power electronics, including in-house DC-DC converters, and its own control software. This means that Redwood can work with any battery chemistry and almost any power source.
Redwood Materials co-founder and CEO J.B. Straubel said the setup gives the company a supply advantage over rivals:
"We're not buying new cells and competing for the same constrained supply as everyone else. We already own the input."
The recycling side of the business feeds the storage side, too. Every pack that comes in for recycling teaches Redwood how batteries degrade in the field, which is what lets its converters turn a mixed stream of returning packs into a single, dependable power system.
Straubel described Redwood's ecosystem as the foundation for the company's next big push:
"Our ecosystem of materials, batteries, and power is the foundation for the massive, intelligent microgrids we're building next, designed to meet the scale of demand coming from AI data centers, hyperscalers, and heavy industry alike."
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Context:
Rivian is not the only automaker feeding Redwood's energy business. General Motors became the first automaker to partner with Redwood across the full battery lifecycle, with Redwood installing about 100 retired GM battery packs at a GM factory in Michigan as a 1.5 MW / 7.2 MWh storage system.
Redwood's biggest deployment so far is already serving the kind of customer its microgrid push is targeting. The company's 12 MW / 63 MWh microgrid in Sparks, Nevada, which Redwood calls the largest second-life battery system in the world, combines solar with repurposed EV batteries to power four Crusoe Spark modular data centers. Redwood reports 99.2% operational availability on the system, and the campus is now expanding to support 20 more Crusoe data centers.
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