Overview
- Rivian and Redwood Materials, which announced the partnership Tuesday, will tie more than 100 second-life Rivian packs into a 10 MWh system at the Normal, Illinois factory in what they bill as a first for a U.S. automaker’s plant.
- The installation will discharge on-site during peak demand to cut utility demand charges and keep production running when the grid is under stress.
- The deal gives Rivian a practical home for warranty returns, engineering mules, and early high‑mileage packs so they can work in stationary storage before recycling.
- Redwood will run the system with its Pack Manager software, which controls mixed‑age and mixed‑health battery packs as one dispatchable energy asset.
- Redwood launched its energy unit in 2025 and built a larger 63 MWh second‑life microgrid for Crusoe, framing this factory pilot as a step toward the hundreds of gigawatt‑hours of storage the U.S. is expected to need by 2030.