germany

Swiss battery metals investor Blackstone Resources said it is forming an international research team that will develop and test “new solid-state battery technologies”.

Blackstone said the team, including “strategic partners” from Germany, Belgium, Poland, Austria, the UK and Switzerland, will form part of its €200 million batteries investment project— which includes plans to build a research centre in the German city of Erfurt.

Germany could help finance three separate corporate alliances for the domestic production of battery cells for Europe’s growing electric vehicle market, according to the country’s economy minister.

Peter Altmaier (pictured) told Reuters: “We’ve now reached a point where we can say that there is likely to be not only one battery cell consortium, but probably three.”

The European Union needs to rethink competition laws to better compete in the batteries market with Asian players, a German ministerial aide has told European battery manufacturers.

But Thomas Bareiss (pictured), parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, admitted that while Germany wanted to be “agnostic” in terms of its support for battery technologies, lithium-ion is currently favoured over lead-acid to build a European battery cells industry to cater for electric vehicles.

A 22MW lithium-ion energy storage system has been inaugurated in Germany by a European consortium.

Italy’s Enel Green Power (EGP), German renewables company Enertrag and Swiss battery maker Leclanché launched the €17 million (US$19m) BESS at Cremzow, 102km northeast of Berlin, on 16 May.

A second large-scale lead-carbon battery storage system has been put into operation in Germany by the country’s Upside Group.

The 16 MW/25 MWh installation at Bennewitz, in the state of Saxony, uses batteries supplied by China’s Narada— as does Upside’s first such lead project at Langenreichenbach, near Leipzig.