The building permit is still pending and EnBW’s final investment decision is still to be made, but the firm said it could be operational by mid-2027 if everything goes smoothly. The land for the BESS is entirely independent of the decommissioning process for the nuclear plant infrastructure, it added.
EnBW is already building a large-scale BESS project, 100MW/100MWh, in Marbach, Southern Germany, as well as a pumped hydro energy storage project launched in 2023.
The energy storage market in Germany is currently amongst the most active in Europe, with huge financial opportunities in what is the continent’s largest wholesale energy market, plus ancillary services, meaning a strong business case. Major large-scale projects and pipelines have been progressed by Giga Storage, Trianel and Luxcara, Dais and Electric Land and Econergy in the past month alone – see all recent coverage here.
However, challenges around grid access and regulatory costs remain the biggest hurdles. For example, recently a high court upheld a grid access construction fee for BESS, in a case brought by a developer.