A team of USU researchers is getting some national attention for a project that could give electric vehicle batteries a second life as solar energy storage. The team from USUâs Utah Power Electronics Lab includes professors Hongjie Wang and Regan Zane as well as doctoral students Marium Rasheed and Mohamed Kamel. Working with Maryland-based research firm Dream Team, the researchers are developing technology that could adapt batteries retired from electrical vehicles for storing solar energy. âThat would solve two problems,â said Wang, the projectâs principal investigator. âOne is how to handle the retired batteries from electrical vehicles. And the second one is to reduce the solar energy storage cost.â