Energy firm RWE has completed the installation of Germany’s megabattery with a total capacity of 117 MW/128 MWh.
The battery system is made up of 420 blocks of lithium-ion batteries and has been installed at RWE power plant sites in Lingen in Lower Saxony (49 MWh) and Werne in North Rhine-Westphalia (79 MWh).
The installation work was completed in 14 months. According to the German company, the battery storage system has a virtual connection with RWE’s run-of-river power plants along the Moselle River, allowing the company to provide additional power as balancing energy and increasing the total capacity of power available for grid stabilization by up to 15%.
RWE invested around €50 million into this project, and commercial operation is scheduled to start in the next few days. The battery system has already fed electricity into the grid and is currently undergoing a trial run.
The company says it has also carried out tests out on the software it developed for intelligent linking to the Moselle power plants. Regular application of the programme is expected to start later in 2023.
“With the increasing expansion of renewable energies, Germany needs innovative storage solutions on an industrial scale that can step in when the wind and sun are not supplying," Roger Miesen, CEO of RWE Generation, said. "In terms of size and technology, we are setting benchmarks in this country with our megabattery. The completed battery storage facilities and our hydroelectric power plants on the Moselle will work hand in hand in the future to help stabilize the electricity grid.”
RWE currently operates battery storage projects with a combined installed capacity of around 270 MW/280 MWh and is in the process of completing additional projects with a capacity of more than 700 MW/1,700 MWh globally. The company aims to have a total capacity of 3 GW worldwide by 2030.
