Europe is competing with Nevada Tesla Plant in the battery-making industry in a race for green power majority.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is scheduled to break the grounds at a 500 million-Euro plant that aims to assemble lithium-ion energy-storage that helps in the production of Mercedes-Benz and Maybach luxury cars.
The Green Power Plant is located 130 kilometers south of Berlin. The green power technology is crucial to drive the next generation of green vehicles. Moreover, it aims to hold electricity from wind and solar farms when the supply is at its highest. Taking into account that two highly important industries are moving in the same direction, it is expected that the cost of batteries will decrease.
“As battery costs fall and their energy density increases, we could see cheaper battery-electric cars than their fuel-burning equivalents by 2030,” said Nikolas Soulopoulos, analyst at Bloomberg LP.
The battery-making volume is predicted to double by 2021. This means that it will reach 278 gigawatt-hours, up from 103 now. In addition to this, Europe’s market share is also expected to double over time from 2.5%.
In addition to this, large factories that are planned to be built in Sweden, Hungary and Poland, along with Daimler’s green power plant in Germany, are expected to accommodate the demand of Volkswagen and Renault. With this in mind, researchers estimate that these actions will cut the cost of lithium-ion packs by as much as 43%, which will make electric cars a reality.
When talking about utilities, cheaper batteries leads to a reduction in the cost of storage units that smooth the variable flows of electricity from renewables to the grid. Enel SpA, the largest distributor in Italy, paired a battery with a wind farm, which helped managers forecast the electricity output from the plant with 30% more accuracy.
“Batteries are clearly a key enabler for renewables penetration. We have seen impressive results in our pilot industrial scale projects, especially in terms of increased programming and reduced intermittency.”, said Riccardo Amoroso, the head of innovation at Enel
