STILL conneXXt Nr. 02 English

11 viable battery system available in the foreseeable future: “Before a new system is anywhere near as well developed as today’s lithium-ion technology, and ready for the market, many years will have passed by. And during that time lithium-ion technology will also further evolve,” Mr. Winter explained in talks with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper (FAZ). ADVANTAGES FOR INDUSTRIAL TRUCKS Lithium-ion technology is also the centrepiece of a new generation of efficient industrial trucks. Compared with conventional lead-acid batteries, Li-ion batteries offer many advantages: “Because of the much higher energy density, truck availability is much higher,” is its key advantage says STILL developer and lithium-ion expert Dr. Bernd Bücher. “The service life is greater than lead-acid batteries, by a factor of four to seven,” added Dr. Bücher. “Another big advantage is the much faster charging rate, so after only 30 minutes a STILL Li-ion battery can be up to 50 per cent charged using our in-house charging unit,” explains Florian Ellerkamp, responsi- ble for the development of charging units in the KION Group. “This new technology means opportunity charging is possible at any time without any loss in capacity and because of the battery encapsulation design, it can also take place decentrally.” Battery storage in Schwerin: view inside the battery hall. Picture: WEMAG AG Picture middle: The Tesla mid-range Model 3 scheduled to appear on our roads from 2017. Picture: Tesla Motors TITLE STORY PUMPED STORAGE POWER PLANT Pumped storage power plants can be pictured as giant ecological batteries capable of storing any excess power generated and making it available at a later time. They are built to exploit height differences of many metres and comprise an upper reservoir (the storage reser- voir) and a lower reservoir. Both are connected by pipes of diameter measured in metres, at the lower end of which is the power plant proper. Whenever renewable energy sources generate more power than is consumed at the time, this electrical energy is used to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir. Vice versa, water is released from the upper storage reservoir through the system of pipes to the lower reservoir, driving turbines on the way which are connected to generators to generate power which is fed into the grid. BATTERY STORAGE POWER PLANTS A second kind of storage power plant makes use of batteries as we are familiar with from electronic devices and modern electric fork-lift trucks: these are known as battery storage power plants. In 2014 in Schwerin/Germany, one such massive battery plant was connected to the grid in order to equalise local power fluctuations: a group made up of 25,000 lithium-ion batteries with a combined capacity of five megawatt hours (MWh). A Daimler AG subsidiary based in Hannover/ Germany has announced that it intends to commence construction of a large-scale storage system this year which would also be made up of battery units originally intended for electric cars. With a planned storage capacity of 15 MWh this would be one of the largest such system in Europe. Even these figures are, however, put into shade by the world’s largest battery storage power plant, located in southern California. This also makes use of lithium-ion technology and offers a massive capacity of 400 MWh. E-MOBILITY In order to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and protect global ecosystems, the importance of electric mobility will increase. The automotive sector and its importance for the energy transition should not be underestimated – after all 30 % of Germany’s CO2 emissions are due to the burning of fuels for road use. E-mobility promises not only emission-free operation but also that the genera- tion of the electrical energy is possible without polluting emissions. Electrically-powered industrial trucks have already been carrying the burden, literally, for many years in the intracompany movement of goods. And electric cars will soon realistically be able to play a serious role in road traffic. Almost all well-known car manufacturers now offer e-powered cars in their ranges; although it is above all Tesla which plans to help electric vehicles achieve the all-important break- through in 2017 when it launches its Model 3. A mid-range car with prices starting at 35,000 dollars, effectively pushing down the entry price for electric cars of this quality. When Tesla announced it would take orders for the vehicle on 31 March 2016, the Tesla dealerships were overwhelmed by queues of people all over the world, just like in the good old days of Apple’s I-phone. According to Tesla orders were placed for almost 300,000 Model 3 cars in the first three days. LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES These successes have primarily been made possible by advances in lithium-ion technology. One result of the strong growth in the availability is that prices for Li-ion batteries have been falling steadily. Martin Winter, a battery expert at the Münster Electrochemical Energy Technology company (MEET), says that Li-ion technology is the most

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