Power from the can for all occasions

It is not just voltage gradients that can occur and need to be balanced out so that electricity continues to flow and the grid does not falter and collapse. Photovoltaics do not produce electricity when the sun has set and it has become dark, and wind turbines stand still when there is no wind. The municipal utilities are now setting up a buffer to deal with the varying electricity supply, a not-so-small one at two megawatt hours.

“We are part of the control energy supply,” explains Christoph Sandler, project manager at the municipal utility company. If there is a drop or a surplus in the network, the Amstetten municipal utility company, as well as the Verbund, which already operates a large storage facility designed for 14.2 megawatt hours at the Danube power plant in Mitterkirchen, will also step in as a power generator to save the day from a blackout.

Construction of the containers with huge batteries in their rooms will begin this year on the site of the Ybbs power plant, for which the municipal company is investing 900,000 euros.

The power buffer, which is being built with technical assistance from the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), is also a precaution for emergencies. A separate cable harness already runs from the transformer of the power plant to the Pölzhalle, which becomes the switching point and supply center for the district in the event of a crisis and is supplied with electricity independently of the outside world. If, against all hopes, a blackout does occur, there is no need to start up diesel generators, unlike in a hospital, for example, but emergency power is drawn from the large battery.

Christoph Sandler, project manager at Stadtwerke