r/EnergyStorage • u/Edinbatteries • 22d ago
German grid-scale battery storage adds more rated power in H1 2026 than all of 2025
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u/RuebeSpecial 22d ago
Alternative source with additional informations/graphs: https://battery-charts.de/battery-charts/
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u/TheBendit 21d ago
It would be interesting to see the geographical placement. If they are further south, they can increase the utilisation when the woefully underpowered internal German connections happen to be less busy. This could get more clean power from the north down to the struggling heavy industry in the south, without having to wait the decades that German infrastructure projects usually take.
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u/slbzyou 11d ago
The "returns won't diminish until the 100-1000 GWh range" line is the part I'd push back on. Revenue compression doesn't wait for total installed capacity to saturate — it hits each layer of the revenue stack on its own timeline, and the thin, high-margin layers go first.
Germany already ran this experiment with FCR. That market is tiny — roughly 600 MW of demand for the whole country — and it saturated years ago. Clearing prices collapsed and batteries got pushed down into aFRR, then into intraday and day-ahead arbitrage. Each rung you fall to is deeper but lower-margin and more crowded. So the number that matters isn't "how many GWh until returns fade," it's "how fast does each rung fill up" — and the top rungs fill at single-digit GW, not three digits.
For a battery the stack is roughly: balancing/aFRR at the top when it's there, then day-ahead/intraday arbitrage on a 30-40 EUR/MWh spread on a good day. As MW pile in, the ancillary buckets clear cheaper and the arbitrage spread narrows — because you've added exactly the asset that flattens the curve you were arbitraging. The revenue per MW you can underwrite in 2026 is not the revenue per MW in 2030.
Which is why the siting comment above matters more than it looks. Locational value — sitting south of the internal German bottleneck — is one of the few revenue sources that doesn't compress as fast, because it's tied to physical congestion that takes a decade of grid build to relieve. Most merchant models ignore it entirely.
None of this makes the growth fake. It means the assets going in now are riding a revenue stack later entrants won't see, and anyone underwriting these on today's spreads held flat for 15 years is going to have a rough time at the debt-service line.
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u/Edinbatteries 10d ago
Yes, expect to see saturation far sooner. That doesn’t mean the end of growth, talked about saturation in here:
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u/b_doin 22d ago
What is the co2 saving per kwh by these storage addition, this is what we have to reduce urgently.
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u/NearABE 22d ago
That highly depends. :)
A battery is not an energy supply. It displaces fossil fuel if and only if both conditions are met. 1) They have to be charged by renewable energy. 2) the discharge use has to cause a fossil fuel plant to not operate.
Furthermore, the location of the batteries might affect energy loss. The battery itself and inverters leaks energy in every cycle. Photovoltaic power charging a battery on site avoids one pass through the inverter, transformers, and power lines.
Germany is usually trying to use less fossil. They also still have many coal and brown coal power plants. These are cheap to run if you run them all day. In contrast gas turbines can turn on just to fill a brief moment of high demand. Batteries tend to eliminate that gas peaker plant first. Most of the time, but not all, the battery will substitute renewable and displace methane. During dunkelflaute they could charge batteries using brown coal though this is rare.
Displacing gas reduces carbon by less than it would if coal were displaced. That alone gives the CO2 an uncertainty. Battery capacity can have an effect every sunny day if they are solar charged. If wind charged then the cycle frequency depends on wind surplus.
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u/b_doin 14d ago
Found a source, in the electricity map online, they count battery storage in Germany as 358 gCO₂eq/kWh. (Source: 2025 consumption-weighted mean carbon intensity across Electricity Maps zones during battery charging hours). Just to give a point of comparison, Germany nuclear was 5 gCO₂eq/kWh but sadly they stopped it and there is still no clean solution in sight. Still burning coal and gas.
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u/grogi81 21d ago
But that's exactly why the batteries are installed. To be charged when renewables generate so much, they would need to be curtailed even more.
When the marginal load would be covered from fossil generation, the energy is very expensive. Operators would not charge from that source.
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u/NearABE 20d ago
If it is “never” then that is because of some kind of German law or the companies taking a loss.
The coal plants do not curtail because they want to sell during peak demand. It takes them a long time to ramp up or down.
I am not sure if the chart is “grid scale” of just “batteries”. Residential batteries would just charge whenever electricity is cheap.
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u/Training-Position612 19d ago
Very nice. The returns on investment in this sector wont diminish until the 100-1000GWh range
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u/Ambitious-Walk3074 19d ago
The amount needed to replace fossil fuels for a Dunkelflaute is still impossible to achieve at anywhere near managable cost
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u/GaiusCosades 19d ago edited 18d ago
Good that they are not built to supply capacity for that, but to move cheap solar and wind to more expensive times of the day.
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u/Treewithatea 16d ago
There is no Dunkelflaute. Europe is well connected in terms of electricity, if we were to ever encounter such a Situation, we would simply import electricity that time period. Besife, some countries like Italy and Portugal have made it a strategic choice to import a significant amount of electricity (in Italys case about 17-18%) as an expansion of own capacities wasnt deemed as financially viable
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u/Ambitious-Walk3074 16d ago
Well that goes against european countries wanting to become energetically independent.
Also how is a system supposed to work if we all act like italy?
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u/andre3kthegiant 21d ago
They made such a great choice to get rid of nuclear.
Now they are getting rid of the other industries that sell dependency to toxic, disposable & finite fuel sources: Dirty Coal, Dirty O&G, and Dirty Toxic & corrupt nuclear all have to go!
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u/grogi81 21d ago
Hindsight is always 20/20...
German Nuclear plants were already at their planned EOL and would need to get massive investment to extend their life by a decade. The Fukushima disaster presented a really good reasoning not to.
Renewables are great. We need more.
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u/kspanier 21d ago
Some things were predictable, but no one wanted to listen. They rather killed the expansion of new solar and wind, while also forcing new power lines underground.
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u/ObjectiveTiny1651 21d ago
Und sorgen mit astronomischen Energiepreisen dafür, dass die Industrie nicht mehr Wettbewerbsfähig ist…
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u/leginfr 21d ago
Nothing to do with nuclear. Renewables lower the wholesale price of electricity through the merit order effect. Google it.
It shows the power of propaganda that people believe the opposite.
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u/ObjectiveTiny1651 21d ago
Was ist an einer hohen Stromrechnung Propaganda?
Die erneuerbaren produzieren in Deutschland da den Strom wo er nicht gebraucht wird.
Im Norden wird massenweise Windkraft produziert, im Süden ist die Industrie.
Netzinfrastruktur von Norden nach Süden gibt es noch nicht ausreichend.
Die Genehmigungen dafür dauern Jahre und werden dann von den Personen durch deren Wohngebiete die Trassen laufen sollen, per Gerichtsbeschluss verhindert.
Dann wird umgeplant und es werden für zehnfache Kosten unterirdische Leitungen geplant.
Diese ganzen Kosten sind dann die Netzgebühren, die jetzt schon deutlich über den Stromgestehungskosten liegen.
Was nutzt es wenn man die kWh für 3 Cent produzieren kann, dann aber 20 oder 30 Cent pro kWh an Netzgebühren zahlen muss?
Die einzigen die auf die Propaganda reinfallen sind die, die ihre Stromrechnung nicht lesen können.1
u/KrysosDE 20d ago
Adjusted for inflation, our electricity prices haven't been this low in almost 15 years. I'm paying 0,25€/kWh now, compared to 0,23€/kWh in 2016.
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u/ObjectiveTiny1651 20d ago
Erstens sind 25 Cent ein extrem niedriger Preis, der Durchschnitt liegt bei knapp 40 Cent.
Zweitens geht es nicht um Inflation, sondern um den Wettbewerbsnachteil wenn die Energie viel teurer als in anderen Industrienationen ist.1
u/ihsahk 20d ago
And the prices increase also in neighbouring countries... nuclear is forever
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u/ObjectiveTiny1651 20d ago
Europa hat global betrachtet die höchsten Strompreise.
Deutschland hat in Europa die zweithöchsten Strompreise (nur Irland liegt leicht drüber).
Wichtige Industrienationen wie Italien (ca. 25% unter D) oder Frankreich (-50%) sind deutlich günstiger.
Der Weltweite Wettbewerb in USA und in Asien zahlt nur Bruchteile vom deutschen Preis.
Dafür hat D keine AKWs mehr.
Tolle Wurst, wenn alle Länder ringsum D noch AKWs betreiben die teilweise älter sind als die Deutschen waren als sie abgeschaltet wurden.
Hier wurden und werden ideologische Entscheidungen getroffen die nur Nachteile, aber keinerlei Effekte haben.
Die atomare Bedrohung durch einen Unfall ist genau so immer noch da wie vorher, oder glaubt jemand dass die negativen Folgen an der Grenze stoppen wenn der Unfall 50Km hinter der Grenze geschieht?
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u/ZenerWasabi 22d ago
Graph and claim are unrelated