It was toward the end of last year that Tesla first hit the headlines with the to date world’s largest battery storage project in southern Australia , boasting a capacity of 129 MWh. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the new project from Tesla and Neoen, aimed at further stabilizing the volatile generation of energy in southern Australian as a result of the weather conditions here, is comparatively modest. The storage unit will also support a 40-hectare Nectar Farm glasshouse, which would not have been able to proceed without the battery. The unit is scheduled to be connected to the grid in mid 2019.

With the growing use of renewable energies, the demand for storage solutions has risen significantly: While coal-fired and nuclear power plants at most have to contend with fluctuating demand when it comes to generating power, operators of wind farms and solar plants also have to contend with fluctuating natural energy resources. Here in Germany, the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT) ( RedoxWind project) and the Jülich Solar Institute at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences ( multiTESS project), for example, are conducting research on reliable storage technology for renewable energies.