USU Apr 29, 2021 LOGAN --- A team of researchers from Utah State University were named one of ten finalists in the nationwide American-Made Solar Prize competition. For their submission, researchers from the Utah Power Electronics Lab partnered with Dream Team, a Maryland-based security research firm, to develop solar energy storage systems using “retired” batteries from electric vehicles, or EVs. The technology could dramatically reduce the cost of solar energy storage, making the adoption of solar energy more accessible and economically viable for widespread use. “The target here is to reduce the cost of solar energy storage systems by 50 percent,” said Hongjie Wang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. “The cost of electrical vehicle retired batteries is much lower, and we can use them to directly fuel energy storage systems with the active life-balancing technologies that we developed.”