Battery degradation intelligence · global

The global storage fleet,
under observation.

LIFETIMEBESS watches how grid-scale storage is actually operated across the world's power markets, asset by asset: how hard each one cycles, how that compares to its peers, and what it implies for how long it lasts.

Tap or hover any marker for detail. Cycling and health figures shown publicly are modelled estimates, not measurements of the named assets.

Storage assets under observation — marker scales with energy capacity Tap or hover a marker for detail
—GWh
grid-scale storage under observation
—
power markets covered
—
storage assets tracked
—yrs
of operating history in the corpus
Circular economy for grid-scale storage · global

The end of a battery's life
is a decision, not a date.

Everything above is the forecast. This is what we do with it: tell you whether to keep the asset, refurbish it, repurpose it or recycle it — what each route is worth, and what the waste chain will require you to prove.

Score a retiring asset See what the material is worth →

For asset owners, IPPs, waste managers, recyclers, second-life integrators and EPR schemes. Both tools run in your browser — no upload, no account.

  1. First life — grid-scale operation: arbitrage, capacity, reserve.
  2. The decision — augment, re-rate or retire, and in which year.
  3. Reuse & second life — refurbish in place, or repurpose into a lower-duty application.
  4. Collection & recycling — the regulated waste chain and material recovery.
  5. Materials — lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper back into new cells.

Most platforms stop at the second node. The value of a storage asset is decided at the third and the fourth — and by then the data you needed is a year old.

18 February 2027
the EU battery passport becomes mandatory
80 % lithium recovery
EU target, end of 2031 — 50 % from 2027
The problem

The industry's forecast stops
exactly one decision too early

Everyone models state of health. Almost nobody models what to do when it lands. The result is that the single largest residual value in a storage asset — what its modules are worth on the day they come out — is decided by whoever happens to be in the room, with no number in front of them.

"End of life" is a price, not a state

A pack at 70 % state of health has not stopped working — it has stopped being worth what it was worth for this duty cycle. Whether that pack should be re-rated, refurbished, sold into a second-life market or sent to material recovery is a financial question with four different answers, and they differ by an order of magnitude.

The window closes, quietly

Between the moment a pack stops being ideal for its first job and the moment nobody will buy it, there is a window of a few years. Inside it, modules are worth several times their scrap value. Outside it, they are a disposal cost. Nothing on an operator's dashboard tells them which side of that window they are on.

The waste chain wants proof, not opinion

Extended producer responsibility, transboundary shipment rules and — from 18 February 2027 — the EU battery passport all turn lifecycle history into a legal record. A collector, a refurbisher or a customs officer needs a document. "The BMS says it's fine" is not one.

What we deliver

Four routes. One engine. One comparable number.

The same degradation model that produces state of health and remaining useful life scores every exit route on the same basis: net value in US$ per kWh of nameplate, realised at the retirement decision. Suitability is scored separately, because the technically right route and the financially best route are not always the same — and you should be told when they disagree.

Route 01

Keep in service

Re-rate the duty cycle and run the asset longer. The cheapest megawatt-hour is the one you do not replace.

  • Wants: healthy state of health, tight cell spread
  • Pays in: deferred replacement capex
  • Killed by: resistance rise, imbalance
Route 02

Refurbish

Replace the worst decile of modules, rebalance, keep the asset where it is. The pack delivers what its weakest modules deliver — so replace those.

  • Wants: good average health, bad spread
  • Pays in: years of life recovered
  • Killed by: uniform, whole-pack fade
Route 03

Second life

Repurpose into an application that asks less of the pack: backup, C&I peak shaving, EV charging buffers, off-grid.

  • Wants: 55–80 % health, balanced cells, records
  • Pays in: resale of remaining capacity
  • Killed by: missing traceability
Route 04

Material recovery

Into the regulated waste chain: collection, discharge, dismantling, black mass, hydrometallurgy — lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper back into new cells.

  • Wants: nothing — it is always available
  • Pays in: metal, minus the process
  • Careful: for LFP it is often a net cost

Score your own asset — free, in your browser →

The number nobody publishes

The second-life window is a few years wide, and nothing tells you when it opens

Above roughly 80 % state of health, a pack is still doing its first job and repurposing it destroys value. Below roughly 55 %, no integrator recovers the cost of testing, sorting and re-certifying it. In between there is a window — the only period in which a retired module is worth substantially more than its metal. Its width depends entirely on how hard the asset has been cycled, which is precisely what the model computes.

  • Miss it early and you sell an asset that was still earning.
  • Miss it late and residual value collapses to scrap, with a disposal cost attached.
  • Hit it and the same modules fund a share of the replacement.
How the routing model works →
Route windows over the modelled health curve SAMPLE
Illustrative asset4-hour LFP, ~350 EFC/yr
Not a measurementmodelled trajectory, stated assumptions
Two ways to own a battery

The difference is not the hardware.
It is when you start asking.

Linear

Buy, run, replace, dispose. The asset has one job and one ending.

  • Retirement date fixed by warranty expiry, not by condition
  • Residual value discovered on the day of removal — from whoever answers the phone
  • Modules leave as a single undifferentiated lot, priced at the worst one
  • Traceability assembled retroactively, if at all
  • Disposal is a line in the decommissioning budget
  • Recycling is a compliance obligation

Circular

The exit is designed from year one, and re-priced every year the asset runs.

  • Retirement date is an output of the model, re-computed as the asset ages
  • Residual value is tracked continuously — you enter the negotiation with a number
  • Modules are graded and routed individually: the good ones subsidise the rest
  • The evidence record is built while the asset runs, ready for the passport
  • End of life is a revenue line with a forecast attached
  • Recycling is the route you take when the others have been priced and lost
How it works

From operating behaviour to a routing decision — and a record

The first three steps are the platform you already know. The circular layer adds the two that decide what the asset is worth when it stops.

Observe

How storage assets are actually operated across the world's power markets — charge and discharge, duty cycle, market service, ambient conditions — alongside your own plant data.

Fingerprint

Equivalent full cycles, depth-of-discharge distribution via rainflow counting, throughput, C-rate, resting state of charge and thermal exposure. Per module where the data allows.

Model

A calendar-plus-cycling degradation engine parameterised by chemistry, with Monte Carlo propagation of parameter uncertainty. Seeded: any result can be regenerated exactly.

Route

Every exit — keep, refurbish, repurpose, recycle — scored for suitability and priced on the same basis, with hard exclusions applied first and the reasoning written out.

Document

The result ships as a signed, hash-verifiable evidence package under an open manifest format — the record a collector, a refurbisher, an auditor or a battery passport will ask for.

Read the routing methodology →

Waste management

Where we sit in the chain

We do not collect, transport, refurbish or recycle anything. We produce the number and the record that let each party in the chain price its own step — which is exactly why every party can use it.

Owner / operator Decides and declares

Holds the asset and the obligation. Needs to know what the modules are worth before the removal crew is booked.

LIFETIMEBESS Grades and prices

Independent condition assessment per module, route recommendation, residual value, and the signed evidence package behind both.

Collector / waste manager Moves and stores

Prices the job against a known condition and a known hazard class instead of a worst-case assumption. Fewer surprises at the gate.

Refurbisher / integrator Reuses

Buys graded, documented modules instead of a mixed pallet — the single biggest reason second-life projects fail to close.

Recycler Recovers

Receives a declared chemistry, mass and state of charge, and can plan yield instead of discovering it.

We hold no equity in asset owners, operate no assets, run no trading desk and sell no hardware, collection or recycling services. The grade is the product.

The clock

Lifecycle data stops being optional

Three regimes are converging on the same requirement: a battery placed on the market must carry a verifiable record of what it is, how it aged and what can be recovered from it. Everything on this timeline is drawn from the legal text or the official summary — dates and percentages, not interpretation.

Why this matters commercially. A second-life sale, a cross-border shipment and an EPR declaration all fail on the same missing artefact: an independent, dated, tamper-evident statement of condition. That artefact is what our reports already are.
18 February 2027

EU battery passport

Every EV, LMT and industrial battery above 2 kWh placed on the EU market must carry a digital passport reachable by QR code, covering chemistry, carbon footprint, recycled content, state of health and due diligence.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542
End of 2027

First material recovery targets

50 % of the lithium and 90 % of the cobalt, copper, nickel and lead in waste batteries must be recovered.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542
End of 2031

The targets that bite

Lithium recovery rises to 80 %; cobalt, copper, nickel and lead to 95 %. From 18 August 2031, new batteries must contain minimum recycled content: 16 % cobalt, 6 % lithium, 6 % nickel, 85 % lead.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1542
Chile · in consultation

Ley REP 20.920 — battery targets

Batteries are a priority product under Chile's extended producer responsibility law. The supreme decree setting collection and valorisation targets is still a draft in public consultation, with lithium phased in more slowly than lead. The environmental assessment guidance already places BESS batteries inside the law's scope.

Ley 20.920 · Ministerio del Medio Ambiente
Ongoing

Basel Convention

Waste lithium-ion batteries crossing a border are a controlled transboundary movement. The condition declaration decides whether a shipment is waste or a functioning product — and whether it moves at all.

Basel Convention · national implementations
Try it now

Two calculators, nothing uploaded

Both run entirely in your browser. Every assumption is visible and editable, and every default carries its provenance.

Route Grader

Nine inputs about a retiring asset — chemistry, health, age, cell spread, resistance rise, incident history, records — and you get all four routes scored, priced and explained, with the hard exclusions applied first.

Grade an asset →

Material recovery calculator

Tonnes of lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminium and graphite in your fleet — what is recovered under today's practice versus the EU 2027 and 2031 targets, what it is worth, and whether it pays for the process.

Run the numbers →
Who we work with

Everyone the module passes through

Owners, IPPs & utilities

Residual value tracked as a live number instead of discovered at decommissioning. Augmentation and retirement planned together, because they are the same decision seen from two sides.

Waste managers & collectors

A declared chemistry, mass, state of charge and hazard classification before the truck is dispatched — so the job is priced on what is actually there rather than on the worst case.

Recyclers & refiners

Feedstock characterised before it arrives: expected yield per material, contamination risk and the mass balance to plan a campaign against. Grading upstream is cheaper than sorting downstream.

Second-life integrators

Graded, documented modules with a condition history, not a mixed pallet at an auction price. The reason most second-life projects stall is that nobody can warrant what is in the crate.

OEMs & EPR schemes

Field evidence of how your systems actually age, and the per-asset record that producer responsibility reporting and the battery passport will need to be populated from.

Lenders, funds & insurers

A defensible residual value at the end of the debt tenor, and a decommissioning provision built on a modelled recovery figure rather than a placeholder.

Who we are

We built the recycling plant's
digital twin before we built this

LIFETIMEBESS is built by the SolarPro group, a solar and storage engineering firm operating in one of the harshest and fastest-growing storage markets on earth — and the circular layer is not a pivot. It is where the engine came from.

  • The simulation engine began life as an industrial digital twin in production (Python/SimPy) for a lithium-ion battery recycling plant — the process side of the loop, modelled before the asset side.
  • Our group runs SolarOnline, an AI-driven O&M platform, over 293 MWp of solar and a 110 MW / 220 MWh battery in Chile's Atacama Desert — a live laboratory for thermal stress and solar-shifting duty cycles.
  • We work from a country whose extended producer responsibility law already names batteries a priority product, and whose storage fleet went from nothing to gigawatt-hours in three years. The retirement wave is not theoretical here.
SolarPro SolarOnline
Cycling strategy comparison — sample SAMPLE
Moderate cyclinga longer first life, a later exit
Aggressive arbitragemore revenue now, the second-life window opens years earlier
Our standard

Bands, not promises — and prices you can overwrite

Circular economy claims attract round numbers. Ours are labelled: every figure on this site is tagged as verified against a primary source, estimated from published ranges, or illustrative. Every price in every calculator is an input you can change, because your gate price is not ours.

Uncertainty made visible verified

Health and remaining life always arrive as a p05–p95 band. Route recommendations arrive with the exclusions that were applied and the criteria that decided.

Provenance on every number estimated

Regulatory figures come from the legal text. Material intensities come from published research. Prices come from dated market references. Each one says which it is.

Built to survive scrutiny illustrative

Written for the room where it will be challenged: a residual value dispute, an EPR audit, a customs classification, a data room.

Engagements

Start with one retiring asset

Every engagement is scoped to the size of the fleet and the quality of data available.

See all services with pricing →

End-of-life assessment

One asset · fixed fee · 3–4 weeks
  • Condition diagnosis from your operating data, per module where data allows
  • All four routes scored and priced on the same basis
  • Residual value with p05–p95 bands and the year the window closes
  • Material inventory and expected recovery yield by process
  • Hazard classification and shipment considerations
  • Signed evidence package, every assumption stated
Scoped per assetcredited against Continuous
Request assessment
Most common

Circular tracking

Per asset · subscription
  • Everything in the assessment, recomputed as new operating data arrives
  • Live residual value and a moving estimate of when the window opens and closes
  • Alerts when an asset is about to leave a route's eligibility range
  • Continuous guarantee tracking against the warranted curve
  • Passport-ready record maintained while the asset runs
  • Unlimited exportable reports for boards, buyers, collectors and regulators
Subscription per assetscoped by capacity and data
Talk to us

Portfolio & compliance

Fleets, funds, OEMs and EPR schemes
  • Whole fleet in one view: condition, route, residual value and retirement year
  • Aggregate material inventory and recovery forecast across the portfolio
  • Producer responsibility reporting inputs and passport data feeds
  • Decommissioning provisions built on modelled recovery, not placeholders
  • Data API and integration with your monitoring stack
  • Named technical account team
Always scopedby GWh under management
Contact the team
Frequently asked

What people ask before starting

Do you collect, refurbish or recycle batteries?
No, and that is deliberate. We hold no equity in asset owners, operate no assets, run no trading desk and sell no hardware, collection or recycling services. If we also sold the recycling, our recommendation to recycle would be worth nothing. The grade is the product.
Is second life actually economic, or is it a story?
Sometimes it is a story. At the default assumptions in our Route Grader, second life clears its costs on a healthy, well-documented LFP pack and does not clear them on an unbalanced one — and the tool says so rather than rounding up. The honest answer is that it depends on four things: the resale price in your market, the repurposing cost, the traceability you can prove, and how tight your cell spread is. All four are inputs you can change, and you will see immediately which one is binding.
Why does your recycling calculator sometimes show a negative number?
Because that is frequently the truth for LFP today. Lithium iron phosphate contains no nickel and no cobalt, so the recoverable metal value is thin, and at realistic collection and processing costs the recovered material can be worth less than the process. That is not an argument against recycling — it is the reason extended producer responsibility schemes exist, and the reason the reuse routes should be priced before the recycling route is chosen by default.
What data do you need to grade an asset?
Less than you would expect. Standard BMS exports, capacity test results, configuration and an operating history are enough for a defensible grade with an honest band. Module-level data narrows the band considerably, because the value of a pack is set by its worst modules and an aggregate figure hides them. If you have nothing yet, the browser tools will still give you a first-order answer from five or six numbers.
Does this satisfy the EU battery passport requirement?
It produces the condition and lifecycle evidence a passport has to be populated from, in a signed, verifiable format — but the passport itself is an obligation on whoever places the battery on the market, and it is discharged through their own declaration. We are the independent source for the state-of-health and lifecycle fields, not the registrar.
Are the material and price figures reliable?
They are labelled. Regulatory figures are taken from the legal text or its official summary. Material intensities for lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese are published research values; copper, aluminium and graphite are typical industry ranges and are tagged as estimates. Metal prices are dated market references from August 2026, shown as editable inputs because your contracted gate price is the one that matters, not ours.

You already know when the battery stops.
The question is what it is worth that day.

Send us one asset approaching the end of its first life — anywhere in the world — and we will come back with all four routes priced, and what your data would sharpen.

Request an assessment