The aluminium rolling mill Speira not only produces raw materials for the battery industry, but has also been operating its own large-scale storage facility since November 2021. Since then, it has reduced the costs for the production of its plant in Hamburg and actually earned money actively. This is because the storage unit's 272 battery modules have been buffering the load peaks from Speira's Hamburg factory for a year and a half without any disruptions.
See also: "Large-scale battery storage indispensable"
Stabilising the grid
The storage unit has an output of 1.6 megawatts, which it can supply for one hour. This is enough to additionally support the grid operator in stabilising the electricity grid by means of intelligent load management, without affecting the company's production processes. This is because the battery enables Speira to benefit from atypical grid usage.
Saving electricity costs
Finally, Speira can load electricity into the storage unit when it is abundant in the grid and therefore cheap - for example, when the wind and solar power plants in the region produce a lot of electricity. The company then uses this temporarily stored energy to cover its peak loads. In this way, it minimises the necessary grid connection power, which saves a lot of money.
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In addition, Energy to Market (E2M) markets flexibility on the balancing energy markets for Speira when the storage unit is not needed for peak load capping. The Leipzig-based company is able to provide and secure technical and regulatory access to the balancing energy market - in this case to primary balancing power. Read more about the project here. (su/mfo)
