Section C: New business opportunities

Thursday, 14 September 2017, 14:00-14:30h/C01

Energy Storage Project M5BAT – Medium Scale Batteries for Grid Services

Dr. Christian Folke, Uniper Energy Storage GmbH, Germany

With the expansion of renewable energies in Germany, intelligent networks and technologies to allow larger quantities of energy to be stored are becoming increasingly important. Against this background Uniper, together with partners and support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, is currently building a battery storage plant in Aachen, Germany. The project is called M5BAT: Modular multi-Megawatt multi-Technology Medium-voltage Battery Storage (Modularer multi-Megawatt multi-Technologie Mittelspannungsbatteriespeicher). The unique hybrid battery storage system is rated 5 megawatts. What’s special about M5BAT is its modular design, which combines different battery technologies in an optimum fashion.

The M5BAT project partners are the E.ON Energy Research Center and the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA) at RWTH Aachen University, the energy utility Uniper AG, the battery manufacturer Exide Technologies GmbH with its GNB® Industrial Power Division and the inverter manufacturer SMA Solar Technology AG. They altogether are sending a clear message: innovative technologies for a forward-looking way of storing renewable energies are flexible.

The project comprises two different lead acid batteries and three different Li-Ion batteries which are tested against various energy market applications with regard to performance and degradation.

M5BAT is a hybrid of different battery technologies that optimally combines storage capacities for periods of seconds, minutes or hours, whereby the storage system is designed for a total storage capacity of around 5 megawatt hours (MWh).

This highly efficient and modular system offers a wide range of applications irrespective of location and therefore facilitates the integration of renewable energies. In this initial phase, the M5BAT project will be focusing on two particular aspects:

• Testing the distributed provision of control reserve for stable grid operation
• Electricity trading and the associated exploitation of electricity price arbitrage

Construction of the large battery storage system began in August 2015, with commissioning in 2016. For a period of one year, the battery system will be connected to the local medium-voltage network and used to balance out the energy supply. During this time the trading of capacities on the energy market in real time will also be tested. The participants in the project are jointly investing in the development and testing of this world-first battery storage system. The project is also receiving funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.