Turnkey storage containers made from vehicle batteries provide large cost savings for industry and grid operators

At least 20 MWh of stationary storage capacity all over Germany—this is the first step of what The Mobility House, Renault, and FENECON are planning to achieve as part of the Advanced Battery Storage project. The first storage with 3 MWh is now starting operation in a former coal-fired power plant in Elverlingsen, North Rhine-Westphalia. Like the customer solution, this storage system is made up of two 40-foot standard containers—a battery container and a transformer container—with the turnkey system installed inside. With the stationary storage, the partners are supporting the move in the world of energy towards a decentralized system predominantly using renewable energy, which is prone to major fluctuations as it relies on the wind and sun to generate power. Stationary storage systems balance out these fluctuations, which increases the flexibility of the power grid.

First- and second-use batteries from Renault’s ZOE compact car can be installed in the stationary storage system. The innovative use of second-use batteries as a stationary storage system expands the scope of application and increases the service life of former electric car batteries—and thus also improves their CO2 footprint. Furthermore, the proceeds from this subsequent use reduce the costs for the electric car.

Since 2016, The Mobility House has already been operating more than 2500 lithium-ion vehicle batteries in various systems. The technology has proved to be extremely reliable in daily use over the past years. The systems are automatically controlled by The Mobility House during operation and marketed to the energy markets.

Interested companies looking to solve their “energy problems” on their own premises and be perceived, both internally and from the outside, as pioneers and innovators in the ‘Energiewende’ simply need space for two 40-foot containers and access to a mains connection capacity of 3MW. Customers from industry, coach or fast charging station operators, public utilities, grid operators, and power supply companies aiming to save costs during peak loads can make optimum use of the system’s wide range of benefits:

• The stationary storage system levels out high load peaks directly on site. As this means that less power needs to be taken from the power grid, the system significantly reduces the grid utilization fees. The stationary storage achieves the best results for industrial and commercial companies with a high power consumption of more than 10 GWh a year and/or with load peaks above 500 kW.
• Thanks to the flexibility of the stationary storage systems, grid operators can be supported when grid bottlenecks occur at major nodes.
• In the event of power failure, the stationary storage can step in as a quick, safe, and reliable emergency solution.
• The battery system’s inverters can level out the reactive power at the site.

An example application is an industrial site with high energy consumption. Avoiding load peaks (peak shaving) makes it possible to save a good 200,000 euros per year on energy costs. The costs for the stationary storage units themselves do not affect the balance sheet, however: the financing has already been secured by The Mobility House, Renault, FENECON and two other project partners: the Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co and the French venture capitalist Demeter.

One of the project’s overarching goals is to make optimum use of electric car batteries across their entire service life, which can extend beyond 20 years. In this way, they can play a major role in sector coupling, which involves combining the energy and mobility sectors. A long-term goal—one that The Mobility House is already working on—is using mobile electric cars as active giant swarm storage devices in the energy market (V2G).