The First 100% Green Grid Is Online, Figuratively Speaking

September 16th, 2014 by Roy L Hales

Originally published in the ECOreport

The first 100% green grid is online, figuratively speaking. Philip Hiersemenzel of Younicos said there is no such thing as a Mecklenberg grid (the part of Germany in question), only a European continental grid that stretches from Poland to Portugal, from the northern tip of Denmark to Sicily/Greece. Mecklenburg is already 100% renewable on paper but, without storage, up until recently now most of that electricity had to be exported. This changed four months ago when the 5 MWh battery pack at Schwerin started a “trial run.” Today – September 16, 2014 – it is officially “online.”

One of the major obstacles to Germany’s going “green” has been the necessity of using conventional power plants to back up intermittent renewable energy sources. They have been blocking the grid!

As Hiersemenzel explains,

“To be able to adjust their power just a little up and down, these plants have to run at something like 70% of capacity. In fact a typical coal fired power plant runs at 90% in order to adjust 2% up and down. The remainder of the power thus produced has to be absorbed by the grid and thus blocks space for renewable generation. In Germany we have about 25 Gigawatts of such so-called “must-run” capacity. With an average load of 60 and a low of 45 GW that means that in times of low load everything above 20GW of renewable generation has to be powered down or exported. Thermal plants, of course, produce CO2 to do this.”

Younicos’ solution was to replace the fossil fuel back-up with large scale batteries.

They built the 5 MW/MWh battery power plant in the Schwerin district of Lankow for WEMAG. It houses 1600 battery trays containing 25,600 lithium-manganese-oxide cells that can store and release energy within milliseconds.

“The job of the battery is to provide positive and negative primary frequency regulation – regulations/market design requires this to be made available for a maximum of 15 minutes,” said Hiersemenzel. “It important to understand that the point of this battery is not to store energy for any length of time (and make money buy “buying low and selling high”), but rather to stabilise the grid by providing power – or just as importantly – taking out excess power in the grid, thus stabilizing the grid frequency.”

The battery park enables utilities to de-clog their grids and use a lot more renewable energy.

“Batteries use all of their power (positive and negative) and because they are much faster and much more precise, our 5 MW unit replaces 50 MW of conventional generation capacity that would be AT THE VERY least required for the same +/- 5 MW!” Hiersemenzel explained. “Batteries provide this service not only completely without CO2 emissions, much faster and much more precisely and thus more effectively – and above all more economically! From tomorrow, we’ll be proving that every day for everyone to see!”

So are we witnessing the birth of a 100% renewable grid?

“Definitely,” said Hiersemenzel. “The point here is that intelligent storage makes our grids more resilient, smarter and above all more efficient. It enables the economic use of more renewables and it pays!”

There was a three hour commissioning ceremony today. The following excerpts are taken from Younico’s press release:

Europe’s largest commercial battery power plant was connected to the grid today in the presence of Vice-Chancellor and Energy Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Minister-President Erwin Sellering. The 5 megawatt lithium-ion unit was designed by the Berlin-based grid and storage specialists Younicos for WEMAG, a supplier of green electricity based in the northern German city of Schwerin. The commissioning of the fully automated unit marks the first time in Europe that a stand-alone battery is stabilizing fluctuations in grid frequency, thus helping to safely integrate wind and solar energy into the existing grid.

“The first commercial battery storage system on this scale is an important step towards a successful energy transition,” said Federal Minister Sigmar Gabriel at the opening ceremony. “Batteries are especially well suited to providing control power to stabilize grid frequency. In combination with wind and solar generation, this can ensure the future stability of the power system. WEMAG’s battery power plant is a good example of the commitment of municipal utilities to the energy transition, which can inspire similar projects in other parts of Germany.”

“Up to now the power grid has been largely stabilized by inflexible coal-fired power plants, which can only use a fraction of their output for control power. This blocks space in the grid, increasingly forcing wind and solar generation to be taken offline,” explained Clemens Triebel, CTO of Younicos. “Our battery park avoids this economic impact because it is much faster and more precise than a thermal power station. Thus, our 5 megawatt battery in Schwerin provides the same control power as a conventional 50 megawatt turbine,” the Younicos co-founder added.

“In the WEMAG grid area, more than 80 percent of the power consumed already comes from wind and solar generation – making us a front runner in renewable energy. We therefore feel committed to bringing to market new, more efficient solutions for the energy transition,” adds Thomas Pätzold, CTO of WEMAG AG. “Our battery storage unit shows the way forward: it is the best technical solution for smoothing naturally intermittent renewable feed-in, and it is also commercially very attractive.” In addition to receiving initial development funding of 1.3 million Euros from the innovation program of the Federal Environment Ministry, the unit will earn its keep by competing in the primary frequency regulation market. “In the future, the battery will also provide other system services, such as reactive power and black start capability, thus offering further economic advantages,” Pätzold continued.

Images above (descending from top of page):

Erwin Sellering, Thomas Pätzold, Sigmar Gabriel und Clemens Triebel (v.l.) nehmen den Batteriepark in Betrieb – Courtesy Younicos
WEMAG Luftbild Batteriespeicher – Courtesy Younicos
NaS Batterien 1MW 6MWh von NGK im Technologiezentrum in Berlin Adlershof – Courtesy Younicos
WEMAG Batteriespeicher innen – Courtesy Younicos
Eröffnung 5MW WEMAG Batteriepark Schwerin – Courtesy Younicos

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: 100% Green Grid, smart grid, Younicos

About the Author

Roy L Hales is the editor of the ECOreport (www.theecoreport.com), a website dedicated to exploring how our lifestyle choices and technologies affect the West Coast of North America and writes for both Clean Techncia and PlanetSave. He is a research junkie who has written hundreds of articles since he was first published in 1982. Roy lives on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.

Ghung

Kodiak, Alaska beat them to it, sort of. 99.7% wind and hydro so far this year, with .3% diesel to regulate the line. They’re expanding their battery backup to eliminate the .3% diesel.
kodiakelectric dot com/generation.html
- Jan Veselý
  
  Congratulation, now expand this success at least to whole Alaska.
guest

Here you find live information about Germany’s power generation and use:

http://www.transparency.eex.com/en/Statutory%20Publication%20Requirements%20of%20the%20Transmission%20System%20Operators

To but these figures in Place:

Installed Capacity Solar: about 38 GW
Installed Capacity Wind about 32 GW

I am following this data almost daily. For instance, wind energy production (my observations):

Some days, last winter: About 25 GW
Some days this summer: Down to 0.15 GW
Normal Winter: 17 GW
Normal Summer: 5 GW

Subsidies per annum (excluding industry discount): about 25 billion $
CO2-emmisons in the last five years went up a little.
The second most expensive energy price in Europe (private customers): About 0.39$/kwh

If the US would have Germany’s system it would cost about 400 billion $ a year on top of the electricity bill. For 25% renewable electric energy.

The subsidies are set from the price difference between market price and fixed power price for the renewables. Paradoxically this leads to higher subsidies the more renewable are installed and the more output they generate (Since the market value for instance during noon goes some times below zero).

The installation cost do not matter for the subsidies directly. This summer was pretty bad for renewables, so the subsidies this year will most likely decrease for the first time.

Due to this and some other reasons there will be a change in the system which is currently worked out.

These are facts. Now my comment:

There is no “blocking of the grid”. Renewables by law have to be paid for no matter of its energy is used or not. Without coal and nuclear there would be no renewables at all. Stop blaming the technologies which make it possible to use renewable energy in the first place. Make them work together!

So do not be too optimistic with with 100% renewables. And if you do – energy storage is the key – that is why Germany is researching on H2 a lot and has already some pilot plans connected to wind farms…
- guest
  
  I am Sorry, 400 billion $ a year is too much, I misread a figure. Based on average electricity use in the US (about 500 GW) it would be 200$ billion a year.
  - Jan Veselý
    
    This is not a cost, it is a cash flow. They, at least, get half of the money back by not buying fossil fuels abroad. They also control nice share of the 200+ bln. USD market. Add about 300,000 jobs. The rest (if any) is VERY effective development aid for developing economics and the leverage to reduce CO2 production in much bigger scale than Germany itself (Japan + USA + China = 10 x Germany in CO2).
    - guest
      
      As I wrote, the CO2 emissions are not reduced, in fact the went up in Germany and the targets will not be archived by 2020.
      Europe has CO2 trade system, as long as the among of CO2 emission rights stay constant, renewables do not change anything but the price of these rights – they drop!
      
      About the jobs, it is crazy that people think wind and solar (if they have to be subsidies in any way /more then other power production) create nett jobs. It just contradicts every finding economist have found in the past 200 years!
      
      Think of it like this:
      A coal power plant cost resources to build, to maintain, run and to demolish after about 60 years and creates a certain amount of energy.
      The same goes for the wind farm or solar panels. The price for these projects is in most parts of the world higher, basically they provide less energy for the same amount of money/resources a coal power plant would. This is called:
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
      
      If you stick to the more ineffective technique, maybe you would provide jobs – like if we get ride of the machines in factory and do it by hand. But the economy itself gets less effective and the wealth and living standard is not as high as it could be. That the basic concept of industrialization and thats my best way to put it short!
      
      But! If you consider in the calculation the reduced CO2 emissions the image changes. Then wind farms might be better then coal power plants. But so would gas power plants. That has the CO2 emission right markets to decide.
      
      And for me, if you REALLY want to change something and get rid of CO2 emissions choose the cost effective way. You will archive more progress in less time. Do not follow nice images they most lead you the wrong way.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Are you interested in what’s happening in Germany or are you just presenting a couple of years of minor changes and trying to make it into a story of something important?
        
        Yes, CO2 levels went up a bit in 2012 and 2013. And, yes, Germany may have trouble hitting their 2020 goal.
        
        But the part you leave out is that in 2011 Germany decided to shut down their nuclear plants ahead of schedule and this disrupted the plans they had made years earlier.
        
        Now the good news is that after only a couple of years Germany has pushed on past that capacity loss and is once again cutting fossil fuel use. I’ll give you a graph at the bottom.
        
        I don’t have a lot of time to get into all the jobs stuff with you. I’ll just point out that a very high percentage of coal jobs went away years ago when we started mining coal with large machines. There simply are not the coal jobs we once had. We now blow the tops off mountains rather than dig mines into them.
      - Jan Veselý
        
        Yep, 2013 was an outlier. It was really long and cold winter in middle Europe. The coal plants in the Ruhr area saved France from freezing (they heat by electricity) and it also meant a lot of extra gas heating in German households and other buildings.
        
        2014 winter was warm and coal electricity production is at 20 years low, lower than in “crisis year” 2009. More than 10% lower than year before, nat. gas is 20% lower and nuclear phaseout is about to be slightly sped up.
    - guest
      
      By the way, Germany does not import any oil for power production and almost no gas. Mostly domestic coal and that provides jobs too.
      In fact the first time a oil fired power plant in Austria was put back into business during winter when they shut down nuclear. Almost no solar company survived which Germany had many and almost any big energy company is losing money (which are mostly state owned and use to provide money for german cities) – see how redicules this is?
      - Jan Veselý
        
        66 TWh of natural gas electricity (10% of production) and milions of NG heated building. Almost all imported, Germany is the third biggest natural gas consumer in the world..
      - Jan Veselý
        
        German companies are very successful in their traditional ranks – high tech chemistry (silicon waffers), electronics (inverters, controls), machinery (windmills), on-the-key factories (biogas plants).
        Add all the construction and maintenance staff.
        Add all the extra profit for family farms (biogas, wind farming)
JamesWimberley

The dilemma for Germany is that coal is inflexible and the worst polluter, but a domestic resource. Gas is flexible and less polluting, but Russian. They need one of the two to back up renewables. Short-term storage only helps at the margin.
- Will E
  
  no they do not. Wind and Solar take over and when Scotland votes YES they can get baseload from Scotland from Scotland onshore wind. I see an Energy abundant cheap and clean future.
  When Germany makes the combination of clean energy with EV and heat pump house heating they get there in no time. fossil free.
http://tklist.net/?p=478 TKList

It better be secure. “1600 battery trays containing 25,600 lithium-manganese-oxide cells” This sounds like it will be a target for terrorists.
- GCO
  
  Huh?!? And what could they do with it?
  LMO is relatively stable, you know…
  - http://tklist.net/?p=478 TKList
    
    More power to them then, Mecklenburg that is not terrorists.
    Pun intended.
- jeffhre
  
  Gotta figure a stationary battery storage hall is an incredibly boring target compared to a natural gas pipeline pipeline or a two and a half mile long coal train!
Frank Morris

maybe the start of something big.
- ThomasGerke
  
  And hopefuly the beginning of the end of something big, centralized power stations.
  - Will E
    
    true, end centralized power stations, Siberia gas pipelines, coal pits,