Some 140 exhibitors will be present at the Energy Storage Europe 2016 specialist trade fair this year. The fair takes place in Düsseldorf near the border to Belgium and The Netherlands. The rising number of exhibitoras corresponds to an increase of around 50 per cent in comparison with the previous year.
The range of products, technologies and research topics on display covers battery storage, thermal and mechanical storage and Power2Gas. In addition, production technologies and services relating to the use of storage will be presented. The 5th Energy Storage Conference (ESE) and the 10th International Renewable Energy Storage Conference (IRES 2016) will take place in parallel with the trade fair.
Wide range of technologies is the key to success
This year, the IRES alone spans around 20 top-class sessions in which numerous fields of research and application examples will be dealt with.
For Thomas Speidel, Managing Director of the storage provider and conference sponsor Ads-Tec, the wide range of technologies in the storage industry is a key to its success: “We are experiencing a disruptive change to our energy economy”, he says, “That is why quickly scalable storage technologies such as battery storage, which can easily be rolled out, are beneficial.”
Other technologies such as electrolysis and hydrogen storage, for example, are required in order to be able to store large quantities of energy over longer periods of time. This energy can then be used in hydrogen-powered vehicles or stationary fuel cells.
Financial and economic issues
Thomas Speidel will go into his theses in more detail in the conference session “Energy Storage Systems for the Energy Turnaround in Industrial and Utility Markets“. Political and market topics will be dealt with throughout the whole program for the Energy Storage Conference as well as in “Finance Track” led by the VDE Institute on the second day of the conference.
The main focus is on the prices for lithium batteries because this technology is now shifting to mass production and mass markets. During the last two years the prices dropped around 40 per cent and this tendency is expected to go on with a rapid slide downhill. Low-cost battery storage systems will have a tremendous impact on electricity supply and grid structure all over the world. (HS)
