© Daimler AG

The world’s largest "second use" battery storage facility will be located close to Dortmund: on 3 November, Uwe Beckmeyer, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, laid the foundation stone for the shed in which used batteries from electric vehicles are to be put together to form a new 13 megawatt-hour battery storage facility. This means that the new facility will be able to store roughly as much electricity as a modern wind turbine generates in six hours at full load.

Flagship project aims to re-use batteries

What has happened so far is that, once the performance of batteries from electric cars drops, they have to be disposed of. Not only does this involve a lot of effort, but many of the batteries still have a lot of storage capacity - in some cases up to 90 percent of their original capacity. The Lünen facility will make good use of this potential. Battery packs from 1,000 electric cars which can still be used will be joined together to form a large storage unit. This combines recycling, electric mobility and energy services in an innovative way, the focus being on the re-use of raw and other materials. The new storage facility will therefore be a flagship project for the efficient energy transition. It should help to offset fluctuations in the grid and to stabilise the electricity grid.

Modern storage facilities play a most useful role in balancing electricity supply and demand. They are thus a key element of the massive synchronisation efforts needed for the restructuring of our energy supply.