RWE Gas Storage West GmbH and CMBlu Energy AG have initiated a collaborative project to investigate how RWE can utilize the salt caverns currently used for gas storage as large-scale, organic flow batteries. These underground caverns could potentially store capacities of up to several gigawatt hours of electricity from renewable sources. By comparison, Europe’s largest battery at present — based on lithium-ion technology — is located in Jardelund, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and has a storage capacity of about 50 megawatt hours.
“The future belongs to renewables. In order to make optimal use of green electricity, we need large stationary electricity storage systems. At RWE, we are exploring different storage solutions,” commented Andreas Frohwein, technical managing director of RWE Gas Storage West. “In the future, we may be able to use our salt caverns as batteries for storing enormous quantities of electricity. Using existing technical infrastructure, they coul
