Vattenfall enters the battery storage business

02.10.2024

Storage production and electricity marketing: Vattenfall sees great potential for battery storage projects in Germany

The energy company Vattenfall plans to complete 300 MW of battery storage capacity per year in Germany in the future. "We expect an enormous increase in battery storage capacity, especially for short-term daily flexibility requirements. This is because system flexibility is necessary to stabilize grids and cushion price spikes in the market," Daniel Drexlin-Runde, who helped to develop the marketing of flexible storage and systems at Vattenfall, is quoted as saying in a company press release.

Vattenfall not only wants to implement storage projects, but also take over the marketing - both for its own storage facilities and for batteries from other market participants. Vattenfall wants to take these under contract at a fixed price and manage them for a certain period of time as if they were its own system. In this way, Vattenfall plans to place up to 1,500 MW of large-scale battery capacity on the electricity market in the coming years. The electricity is to be marketed on the wholesale market and also on the balancing energy market.

Vattenfall intends to draw on its experience in the operation and marketing of electricity from pumped storage power plants. Vattenfall operates pumped storage plants and smaller run-of-river power plants in Germany with an installed capacity of around 2,800 MW, including the two largest German pumped storage plants, Goldisthal in Thuringia with 1,060 MW and Markersbach in the Ore Mountains with 1,050 MW. "The short-term marketing of electricity from flexible plants across wholesale and balancing energy markets on the basis of automation tools and algorithms is therefore nothing new for us, but routine and practised practice," emphasizes Drexlin-Runde.

Author: Katia Meyer-Tien
Source: Energie & Management GmbH