“Silicon Valley for renewable energies” in Hamburg?

The northern German city of Hamburg hopes for a “Silicon Valley for renewable energies” as Siemens is testing a new energy storage system, writes Olaf Preuß for Welt Online. The system would heat up rock fill with excess wind power, which a turbine later converts back into electricity. “Rock as storage medium promises far greater performance potential than battery storage,” Till Barmeier, project leader at Siemens, told Die Welt. Siemens had announced last September that it would start constructing a full-size facility for Trimet’s aluminium smelter in Hamburg in spring 2017. It will be able to store around 36 megawatt hours in a container with around 2,000 cubic meters of rock, according to Siemens.

Read the article in German here.

For background read the CLEW dossier New technologies for the Energiewende.