Fraunhofer IFF has demonstrated the functionality of a mobile 1 MW storage system by temporarily disconnecting a building from the grid in Magdeburg, Germany. The battery will be used to compensate the fluctuations in the supply of energy from renewable sources.

Electricity from wind and sun is becoming less expensive and therefore economically attractive for businesses, especially at peak load. If clouds and a lack of wind coincide, then high-performance energy storage systems can help by feeding previously-stored excess electricity back into the grid. At the Fraunhofer Institute IFF, researchers have now shown in an experiment that this is feasible: A building with approximately 150 employees as well as various offices and laboratories was temporarily fully dependent on the supply of energy from a large battery with a capacity of 1 MW. As the institute reported, research operations continued without interruption during the test phase.

The storage solution that was tested uses a total of 5,000 lithium-ion battery cells to provide a capacity of 0.5 MWh. According to the institute's calculations, this can keep the test building running for approximately five hours. However, this type of storage unit can and should also be used in the electricity grid to compensate for voltage fluctuations. The storage system at the institute is primarily used in the development and testing of control systems for intelligent energy grids.

Ralf Ossenbrink

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