Photovoltaic news and pv jobs

Germany: Promoting solar power storage

The Federal Solar Industry Association or BSW welcomes the announcement by the German government to promote the development of solar power storage.

With battery storage that are connected to the grid, peaks in electricity production can be reduced up to 40%.

Solarpraxis/Andreas Schlegel

The German government will apparently start subsidising solar power storage from April onwards according to local media Frankfurter Rundschau. The multi-million program is supposed to nurture the technology development as well as act as a springboard for smaller scale storage. Peter Altmaier, the German Environment Minister had already promised at least €50 million.

With storage, private households can from time to time decouple themselves from the grid and use their generated solar power. This makes sense since the feed-in tariffs for solar have fallen dramatically.The funding is to be handled by the state bank KfW and €2,000 in support is to be expected per installation according to the local media.

Storage, that will be supported by the market incentive program, has high expectations to meet. "Solar power storage will relief the grid by decoupling the supply of energy into the grid at the time of generation. Storage also actively contributes towards the maintenance of uniform voltage and frequency of the grid and thereby takes over important jobs for grid management," explained Prof. Dr. Bernd Engel, grid expert at the Technical University Braunschweig.

With battery storage that is connected to the grid, peaks in electricity production can be reduced up to 40%. Furthermore grid capacity can also be increased by 66% without the need for additional grid expansion. These figures were provided by the Fraunhofer ISE in an actual study.

BSW Solar's Managing Director Jörg Mayer also added that with storage, the lower feed-in into the grid will also reduce the need for new electricity grids. Additionally the self-consumed solar power will not be remunerated and will thus relieve the green energy allocation funds to a considerable extent.