Swedish energy company Vattenfall completes construction of the largest heat storage facility in Europe

The plant is located near the 600 MW Reuter-West coal-fired power plant in Berlin and is scheduled to go into operation in April 2023. The plant can supply heat for about 13 hours. The company says: "This is the best way for us to supply our Berlin customers with heat without using fossil fuels and with a good perspective for the future. "When surplus wind energy is available, it can be converted into heat locally with a system for converting energy and stored in a buffer.

The technical parameters of the storage tank are impressive: 45 metres high and a capacity of 56 million litres. The storage tank is connected to the four pumps via a 400-metre-long pipeline. The way the storage tank works is very simple: it displaces the cold water from below by supplying the same amount of warm water from above via the pumps. As a result, the total amount of water in the tank remains the same, while the quantity ratio between hot and cold water changes.

Vattenfall already started the initial filling of the storage tank at the beginning of July, using both desalinated and degassed water to reduce wear and tear on Berlin's district heating network.

Sources:

pv-magazine, article by Emiliano Bellini (07.07.2022):

https://www.pv-magazine.de/2022/07/07/vattenfall-baut-in-berlin-die-groesste-power-to-heat-anlage-europas/, accessed 07.07.2022 at 20:00.

Official website of Vattenfall:

https://www.vattenfall.de/, accessed 07.07.2022 at 20:00.