The European Cup, the German Energy Industry Act and Energy Storage

The UEFA European Football Championship or European Cup has been a dominant topic in recent weeks, even though the television audience ratings have been quite weak compared to previous tournaments and the German team was unfortunately eliminated early on.

Maybe this is why a resolution passed by the German Bundestag in the final week of its session attracted relatively little attention. The Parliament passed the revised Energy Industry Act (Energiewirtschaftsgesetz, EnWG) on June 24, its very last opportunity to do so in this legislative period. One of the most important innovations here is that the double tax burden on energy storage systems will finally be eliminated to a large extent.

As luck would have it, a practical example of the use of battery storage systems can already be found at one of the European Cup venues.

A football stadium as a model storage project

Amsterdam’s Johan Cruyff Arena hosted the Dutch team’s preliminary matches and the round of 16 match between Wales and Denmark. There were no problems with the power supply during these matches. Had that been the case, however, battery storage, a unique feature of this stadium, would have taken over the emergency supply. In other arenas, the emergency supply required by the football associations is traditionally provided by diesel generators.

Emergency power is only one aspect of the energy system at the Johan Cruyff Arena, however. Eaton, Nissan and The Mobility House equipped the Johan Cruyff Arena (formerly Amsterdam Arena) with one of the largest energy storage systems ever installed in a European commercial building or stadium back in 2017. The energy storage system is integrated into the stadium’s parking garage and has a storage capacity of three megawatts, which can be expanded if necessary. Furthermore, the stadium is equipped with more than 4,000 PV modules on the roof that contribute to local electricity generation. The building complex also has charging stations for e-cars to support sustainable mobility.

In addition to these functions, however, the storage system has the ability to locally compensate for short-term fluctuations in the power grid. This functionality of battery storage will become increasingly important in the context of the energy transition. It is therefore an important step that the previously existing, nonsensical double taxation of the respective systems is now being eliminated. This is also a major step towards making investments in storage systems more lucrative for private households and smaller companies – finally, one can say.

We are wasting time we don’t have

The amendment to the EnWG is ultimately based on the “Clean energy for all Europeans package”, which was adopted in 2019 and is itself based on proposals made by the EU Commission in 2016. It is nothing new and, in view of the complex processes involved, not really surprising that the implementation of EU requirements is taking such a long time. This is not a purely German problem either, for things do not necessarily look any better in the other EU countries. The problem takes on a new dimension with a task of the century such as the energy transition, however: we are simply running out of time and it is important to act quickly.

Furthermore – and we at Eaton are convinced of this – we need a “bottom-up energy transition,” i.e. support from many small projects, cellular networks and solutions at the building level. But for this to succeed, it will require a legally secure foundation, which in turn means that EU requirements must be quickly transposed into national law. This is still taking too long though.

Incidentally, no decision has yet been made on a contentious issue in the Energy Industry Act: Section 14a and so-called peak smoothing. This will only be dealt with again by the next federal government of Germany and will not be an easy task, as it involves a clash of interests between representatives of the network operators, the industry and consumers. An initial legislative draft had still provided for “controllable consumption devices” such as home chargers to be allowed to be temporarily disconnected from the grid by remote control. This did not meet with the agreement of carmakers and e-car owners, however. The new aspect of this situation is that there is now a conflict between the interest groups of the automotive and energy industries for the first time. Both have traditionally enjoyed strong political support as important economic factors for Germany. Finding a balance here is therefore likely to pose another challenge.

Ideally, however, we would not need any such forced shutdowns at all, as the market would solve the problem by means of flexible prices – but that’s a separate issue. In any case, these examples clearly demonstrate that legislation is still lagging far behind what is technically feasible. Exemplary projects such as the Arena in Amsterdam show that battery storage systems have already been tested in practice. Their spread will be inhibited, however, as long as the legal and market conditions don’t fit. This has to change and legislative processes must become faster in order to not slow down the energy transition.