The Renault car group has unveiled plans to build “the biggest stationary energy storage system using electric vehicle batteries ever designed in Europe” by 2020.
Renault said the 70-megawatt/60 megawatt-hour system will be installed across three sites in France and Germany— at Renault plants in Douai and Cleon, and at a former coal-fired plant in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The system will deploy used lithium-ion EV batteries, as well as new batteries stored for future use in standard replacement during after-sales operations, the car group said.
Renault’s ‘new business energy programme’ director Nicolas Schottey said: “This unique assembly will give advanced battery storage the capacity to generate or absorb, instantaneously, the 70MW power. This high power combined with high capacity of our solution will allow (the system) to react efficiently to all major grid solicitations.”
The system, comprising batteries encased in industrial containers, will work to manage the disparity between electrical consumption and production at any given moment, Renault said. The storage capacity will be gradually expanded “to contain the energy of 2,000 EV batteries”, or power equivalent to match the daily consumption of a city of 5,000 homes.
In May of this year, Renault confirmed a deal with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology to receive batteries for use in their Kangoo ZE electric vehicle range.
