The Associated Press he says that a massive new tower, 45 meters long, has started going up in Berlin – to hold 56 million liters of hot water that “will help heat Berlin homes this winter, even if Russia stops supplying gas…”
“The new facility unveiled on Thursday at the Vattenfall Reuter power station will keep water at a near-boiling temperature using electricity from solar and wind power plants located across Germany. During times when renewables exceed demand, the facility will act like a giant battery, and instead of storing electricity, it will store heat…”
"It's a huge thermos that helps us store heat when we don't need it," said Tanja Wielgoss, head of the company's heat unit.
"And then we can release it when we need to use it... Sometimes we have plenty of electricity in the grids that we can't use anymore, so we have to turn off the wind turbines," Wielgoss said. "Why can't we get this electricity too".
The €50 million facility will have a thermal capacity of 200 MW — enough to cover a large part of Berlin's hot water needs during the summer and around 10% of the city's winter requirements. The huge, insulated tank will be able to keep water hot for up to 13 hours, helping to bridge short periods of little wind or sun.
Berlin's top climate official, Bettina Jarasch, said the sooner such heat storage systems are built, the better.
"Because of its geographic location, the Berlin region is even more dependent on Russian fossil fuels than other parts of Germany," he told The Associated Press. "That's why we're really in a hurry here."
"It will be the largest thermal storage unit in Europe when it is completed at the end of this year, but an even larger facility is already being planned in the Netherlands."
