Project: Unique Battery Storage System To Be Built in Aachen
A decisive step towards the increased and better use of renewable energies is the development and expansion of flexible storage technologies that store the energy generated during the day so that it can be used later. In contrast to fossil or nuclear power plants, solar and wind power plants feed electricity into the grid very irregularly. However, as their share of the energy supply increases, conventional power plants will have lower capacity utilization in the future. At the same time, energy surpluses occur when wind energy and solar plants produce more electricity than is needed in good weather conditions. Therefore, one of the major current challenges is to increase storage capacity in order to store surpluses and use them for peak periods.
This year, the E.ON ERC at RWTH, the energy supplier E.ON SE, the battery manufacturer Exide Technologies and the inverter manufacturer SMA Solar Technology are building the world’s first large modular battery storage with a power class of five megawatts in Aachen. The Institute for Power Systems and Power Economics (IAEW) of RWTH Aachen University is accompanying the project.
The planned performance class and the high modularity of the Aachen battery storage system make it unique worldwide and open up a broad spectrum of possible fields of application. In a first step, the project will concentrate on the following purposes: The integration of renewable energies, the testing of a decentralized provision of balancing power for stable grid operation as well as electricity trading and the associated use of electricity price differences. A special feature is the modular structure of the memory, in which different battery technologies are optimally linked with each other. For example, lithium-ion batteries are used as short-term power storage, high-temperature batteries are suitable for energy supply over several hours and lead-acid batteries are used for both short and medium discharge times.
The project is funded with 6.5 million Euros as part of the „Energy Storage Promotion Initiative“ of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy. Commissioning is planned for 2015.
Participating institutions or institutes: