Construction start for world's largest battery storage facility in Switzerland

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The world's largest battery storage facility is to be built in a new technology center in Laufenburg (TZL) in the Swiss canton of Aargau – directly on the German border. The German town of Laufenburg lies opposite on the other side of the Rhine.

Construction work on the TZL began at the start of this week with the traditional ground-breaking ceremony. In addition to the world's largest battery storage facility with redox flow technology to date, a data center for artificial intelligence applications and a special wind tunnel for research and development purposes in the sports sector are also planned here. The TZL is directly connected to the European electricity grid.

World's largest redox flow battery storage planned

According to Giuseppe Santagada, head of the Aargau-based construction company Erne Group, which is responsible for the construction of the project, it is nothing less than the "realization of a project of the century". Erne is cooperating with the Laufenburg-based technology company Flexbase Group, which was founded by the initiators of the TZL project, Marcel Aumer and Sascha Corroccio.

At the heart of the new technology center is the battery storage system. It will be built on a site of over 20,000 square meters, opposite an existing building of the transmission system operator Swissgrid, which will be integrated into the TZL.

According to information from Erne and Flexbase, the redox flow battery, also known as a liquid battery or wet cell, will have a total capacity of more than 1.6 GWh and an output of over 800 MW. The world's largest redox flow battery to date is located in China and has a storage capacity of 400 MWh and an output of 100 MW. The advantage of redox flow batteries is that they are non-explosive and non-flammable.

Project developers are currently basing their calculations and specifications on a standard configuration of such batteries: 75 percent water as the energy storage medium and 25 percent vanadium as the metallic electrolyte. They are the most common type of battery storage system and are therefore currently being used by Flexbase as a kind of benchmark for the public and the media, a company spokesperson told Heise Online. The performance and capacity specifications made "will certainly be met, if not slightly exceeded", the spokesperson emphasizes.

Storage for electricity trading possible

According to Flexbase, there are "several options with regard to the electrolytes that can be used or the required liquid, which will be finally evaluated depending on the progress of the research and then integrated into the concept". The company is working together with renowned institutions in Switzerland and Germany, with the aim of "setting new standards for both the liquid used and the cell stacks", according to the press release.

According to the project partners, the main tasks of the battery storage system can be summarized as grid stabilization, voltage security and reactive power compensation in addition to storing electricity for electricity trading –, i.e. absorbing electricity when energy is cheaply available on the exchange and releasing it again when it is expensive –.

Central Europe's electricity hub

In order to achieve at least the intended capacity, Flexbase expects to build 960 tanks with many millions of liters of electrolyte liquid and a diameter of three meters each. Such a huge facility needs a lot of space: the building with the battery storage facility is to be 180 meters long and 78 meters wide, 20 meters high in the first phase, 30 meters high in the second phase and 25 meters underground.

The TZL site is also home to something like the electricity hub of Central Europe: the Laufenburg substation, often referred to as the "Star of Laufenburg". According to Swissgrid, the electricity grids of Switzerland, Germany and France were interconnected here for the first time in 1958, creating the European interconnected grid.

AI data center and district heating supply

The battery storage system will also serve as an emergency power supply for the power-hungry AI applications in the data center specifically for artificial intelligence applications. Details are to be announced soon. According to reports, there are also some interesting partnerships and customer commitments.

The data center will be cooled sustainably with water and its waste heat will be fed into a district heating network in an energy-efficient manner. Using an existing tunnel system, the waste heat can be supplied to the Laufenburg power plant, which also physically connects the two countries.

Flexbase expects this to save around 75,000 tons of CO₂ in Laufenburg alone over the next 30 years. In addition, the construction of the TZL at the Laufenburg site would create several hundred new jobs and training positions for skilled workers.

The billion-euro project is being financed by private investors and "well-known family businesses from Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein". Universities and companies from the technology sector are also involved.

The technology center is set to begin operations in summer 2028, with the shell of the building scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. A decision on the exact configuration of the redox flow batteries should also have been made by then.

(vbr)