Pumped storage power plants have been in use for over a hundred years to balance fluctuating electricity loads and to cover peak loads. The energy transition creates additional storage demand with its fluctuating feed-in of wind and solar power into the grid. New sites, however, are scarce. Whether the large differences in the tunnel heights of abandoned mines are usable or not is currently being investigated by an interdisciplinary team of researchers on the basis of two viable locations.  more...

The staff at the Federal Environment Agency’s research facilities in the Berlin district of Marienfelde can now test the German government’s first zero-energy building during their daily work. The energy supply is based on the exclusive use of renewable energies: a photovoltaic system produces electricity and a heat pump generates the necessary heating and cooling energy. The building is intended to generate just as much energy as it requires within one year.  more...

The North Frisian island of Pellworm has been a showcase for energy research since the early 1980s. The largest solar farm in Europe was installed there in 1983. In 1989, wind turbines were added to create Europe’s largest hybrid power plant. Now, the island is due to become power-independent, with an intelligent electricity grid with large-scale storage facilities and a large number of home storage systems.  more...

The “Partner-Dampfkraftwerk” research project, which has now begun, aims to significantly improve the demand-driven integration of electricity from fluctuating energy sources. For this purpose, their goal is that existing power plants will reliably balance out the fluctuating power from wind turbines or photovoltaic systems, in order to ensure grid stability. The optimisation measures could already be installed in the short term in existing power plants. With this aim in mind, four power plant operators are collaborating with three research institutes and two components manufacturers, under the project management of VGB PowerTech.  more...

At the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the small-scale production of lithium-ion cells has begun. The goal in the research factory is to reduce production costs by developing process engineering for the mass market. Researchers aim to use this to help the lithium-ion batteries make a breakthrough as stationary and mobile storage facilities.  more...

What will tomorrow’s electricity and heat storage systems look like? This question is being answered by the new forschung-energiespeicher.info web portal as of today. It presents projects from the Energy Storage Research Initiative that are concerned with combined wind-hydrogen systems, batteries in the grid and heat storage. The website is aimed at interested citizens, scientists, politicians, journalists and the professional community.  more...

An energy park is set to be created in Mainz for completion by 2015. The idea is to temporarily store electricity from wind energy as hydrogen. This can be used as fuel, for generating heat or for reconverting the stored energy back into electricity. An electrolysis plant shall store up to six megawatts of electricity and balance out fluctuations in the distribution grid. This would make it the largest plant of its kind to date.  more...

Researchers at the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg have developed lithium-ion batteries with a working life of over 10,000 charge cycles. In so doing, they have achieved a new standard in international technology development. As well as the cell configuration, the scientists have also produced a small sample series. The cells are designed as solar power batteries and for use in electric cars.  more...

How can storage systems be optimally operated? How can the incorporation of renewable energies in the supply grid be supported? These questions are being examined in the "green2store" project. The aim is to unite decentralised storage systems in a virtual cloud and make them accessible.  more...

It is planned to temporarily store surplus electricity from renewable energies using Power-to-Gas. This process uses electrolysis to convert the electricity into hydrogen, which can then be easily stored like natural gas. Although previous electrolysis systems have not been economically efficient. A new design should now enable the technology to be produced cheaply on a megawatt scale.  more...