EDENenergy - our start-up team 2024

This year, the Sustainability Centre is once again supporting an up-and-coming start-up as part of the 2024 start-up support programme. This year's founding team, EDENenergy - The clean solution to store your energy from Freiburg, is working on a solution to integrate discarded batteries from e-bikes or e-scooters into storage systems for photovoltaic systems. By integrating these battery modules, an economical second-life utilisation of these previously unusable storage units is made possible for the first time.

In Germany, there are over 10 million e-bikes (growing annually) and many other micro-mobility vehicles, which are currently experiencing a real boom. Unfortunately, around 1 million e-bike batteries and many thousands of e-scooter batteries are discarded every year because their range is no longer satisfactory. Batteries that are still fully functional but only have 60-70% of their nominal capacity due to ageing and are therefore less attractive for mobile use are often discarded. These batteries are removed after just four to six years of use and either end up in non-transparent disposal systems or are sent for an energy-intensive recycling process. 

At EDENenergy, a large number of these discarded batteries are combined into larger units using innovative charging electronics in collaboration with Fraunhofer Power Electronics, thus giving the precious raw materials a second life as power storage units - regardless of the age of the battery modules. Thanks to the latest semiconductor technology based on gallium nitride (GaN), particularly sustainable and efficient DC/DC converters can be used to connect the batteries. As high energy density is not the top priority for stationary applications, the discarded batteries, together with a fireproof housing design, can be used for many years to come as electricity storage units for photovoltaic systems for private and commercial customers.

EDENenergy's electricity storage systems can significantly increase ‘self-consumption’, i.e. the proportion of solar power produced that is utilised by the customer. This saves costs and reduces dependence on future price fluctuations on the energy market. Taking into account defects and other irreparable damage to the e-bike batteries, the team assumes that at least 15 - 20,000 households can be equipped with a sustainable power storage system from EDENenergy every year using e-bikes alone.