By Renewable Energy World Editors - June 12, 2019Michael Prinz, Managing Director Hamburg Energie GmbH, Andreas Feicht, State Secretary, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, Peter Tschentscher, First Major of Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Markus Tacke, CEO Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Schmitz, Technical University Hamburg (TUHH) in front of the ETES. Credit: SGRE
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy
(SGRE) said that is has begun operation of its electric thermal energy storage
system (ETES), a milestone in the development of energy storage solutions,
according to the company.
The heat storage facility is
located in Hamburg-Altenwerder and contains around 1,000 tonnes of volcanic
rock as an energy storage medium. It is fed with electrical energy converted
into hot air by means of a resistance heater and a blower that heats the rock
to 750°C. When demand peaks, ETES uses a steam turbine for the
re-electrification of the stored energy. The ETES pilot plant can thus store up
to 130 MWh of thermal energy for a week. In addition, the storage capacity of
the system remains constant throughout the charging cycles.
The aim of the pilot plant is
to deliver system evidence of the storage on the grid and to test the heat
storage extensively. In a next step, Siemens Gamesa plans to use its storage
technology in commercial projects and scale up the storage capacity and power.
The goal is to store energy in the range of several gigawatt hours (GWh) in the
near future. One GWh is the equivalent to the daily electricity consumption of
around 50,000 households, said Siemens in a press release.