Challenges and Drivers of Battery Second-Use Community Energy Storage Development: Integrating Social, Techno-Economic, and Behavioral Perspectives

Repurposing retired electric vehicle (EV) batteries into building energy storage offers a sustainable pathway to strengthen energy resilience in under-resourced communities. This study aims to develop a sociotechnical framework for battery-second-use community energy storage (B2U-CES) that connects stakeholder perspectives with system constraints to examine the social, technical, and supply-side factors affecting system feasibility and coordinated deployment. Using a convergent parallel mixed-methods design, the research integrates community resident perspectives with technical and supply-side constraints faced by the battery recycling industry, drawing on 145 resident survey responses and industry-relevant evidence synthesized from 21 peer-reviewed studies. Quantitative analysis identifies four resident themes related to common economic, informational, technical, and community-oriented considerations influencing participation in B2U-CES deployment. Literature synthesis yields six constraint categories spanning informational, economic, safety, infrastructural, social, and policy dimensions. Triangulation maps resident themes to these constraints to identify six reinforcing connections, with policy and coordination acting as a cross-cutting condition that enables aligned incentives, standards and certification, data sharing, and collection infrastructure. The findings provide empirically grounded guidance for technology innovation, community engagement, and mechanism design for B2U-CES development.