Tesvolt AG, a technology leader in commercial and industrial energy storage intends to build a new gigafactory at its headquarters in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany. A highly automated production building for battery storage systems. Also, a new research and development centre is planned for construction. The carbon neutral facility will eventually have a production capacity of up to four gigatonnes per year. Construction will begin in the spring of 2023 and will be completed in 2024.
Tesvolt will invest approximately 60 million euros for the construction of two new buildings as well as the renovation of existing facilities. The company expects to be eligible for up to 12 million euros in subsidies from the Investitionsbank Sachsen-Anhalt. More than 400 jobs are expected to be created in the long run, primarily in research and development, logistics, and project planning. The site will be one of Europe’s largest facilities for commercial stationary battery storage systems, with an annual production capacity of four gigatonne hours.
The battery storage systems will be manufactured on two floors totaling nearly 6,000 square metres in the new factory. A fully automated high-bay racking system will quadruple storage capacity, while a new robotic production line will ensure highly efficient, flexible, and scalable battery module production. Small wind turbines and a photovoltaic installation on the building will ensure that production is completely carbon-neutral. The building’s heat supply is provided by air source heat pumps and heat recovery, and the construction meets the KfW 50 energy efficiency standard. Excess electricity is collected and stored in Tesvolt battery storage systems owned by the factory.
In January 2023, RWE Renewables, a subsidiary of the German energy company RWE AG, completed the construction of Germany’s first mega battery. The company was able to construct a battery system with a total capacity of 117 MW / 128 MWh in approximately 14 months. The new system can start within seconds and produce the required power for around an hour. At the RWE power plant locations in Lingen (Lower Saxony, 49 MWh) and Werne, a total of 420 blocks of lithium-ion batteries have been installed (North Rhine-Westphalia, 79 MWh).