The Volkswagen Group will operate large battery storage systems for the electricity grid.
The first so-called Power Center, which temporarily stores green energy, will be connected to the electricity grid in Germany next year, VW’s chief technology officer Thomas Schmall announced in Berlin on Friday.
The location will be in northern Germany and the groundbreaking ceremony is expected to take place in the next six to eight weeks. “And we will go online early next year,” said Schmall. “Then we are in the concrete realization phase.”
The plant will be operated by VW’s charging network division Elli. The capacity will initially be 700 megawatt hours and can later be expanded to 1 gigawatt hour, Schmall said. This approximately corresponds to the capacity of a gas power plant. More power centers will follow.
The Group is tapping into a new business segment in a growing market. The systems are intended as a buffer for wind and solar energy and thus help stabilize the electricity grid.
“Our investments in stationary battery storage therefore make an important contribution to the sustainable transformation of energy supply,” said Schmall.
Wind turbines and solar power plants still have to be switched off time and time again when there is an oversupply, but large battery storage systems could change that.
VW assumes that the demand for such battery storage systems in Germany will increase tenfold in the coming years. So far, only 1 gigawatt hour of storage is available in Germany. “We will double that with this one power center alone,” Schmall said.
