Up to 380 new energy transition jobs: investors want to build battery factory in Berlin-Marzahn – Berlin

Will the eerie silence at the CleanTech Business Park in Marzahn, which is marketed as Berlin’s largest industrial park, be over soon? Not much has happened there since the data storage manufacturer Swissbit set up shop a few years ago. The state-owned operating company Wista, which successfully organizes the Adlershof Technology Park, has now also taken over the direction in Marzahn and has identified a project that is intended to help this location achieve a breakthrough: It involves building a factory for large batteries, such as those in buildings can be used as storage for solar power.

An international consortium led by the lead battery manufacturer BAE batteries from Oberschöneweide, founded in 1899 as Akkumulatorenfabrik-Aktiengesellschaft (AfA), wants to produce stationary energy storage devices on the site on Bitterfelder Straße – but not lithium-ion batteries, as are often used in electric cars and small appliances. The consortium CSE (stands for Ceramic Salt Energy) relies on sodium chloride, i.e. conventional table salt, as a raw material.

These batteries were developed back in the 1980s and were used, among other things, in Mercedes-Benz vehicles. An unfavorable technology funding policy made the construction of these “salt batteries” unattractive in this country. However, there is still a factory in Switzerland that produces these batteries and sells them worldwide.

“A widespread misconception is that electromobility is the big battery market of the future,” said Jan IJspeert, Managing Director of BAE Batteries. It is the stationary storage of energy. Such batteries are needed in order to achieve the climate targets. In them you can store the electricity from renewable energies, said the manager on Friday during an on-site visit by Franziska Giffey, who visited Marzahn in her role as the SPD’s top candidate for the House of Representatives election.