The German automotive giant Volkswagen announced that it began trading electricity on the Epex Spot exchange on Wednesday, adding that it plans to use discarded batteries from electric vehicles for storage.
Epex Spot organizes the buying and selling of electricity with delivery deadlines of up to one week. It is based in Paris and has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, London, and Vienna.
Volkswagen announced on Wednesday that it has started trading electricity on Epex Spot, based on a storage system consisting of discarded batteries for electric vehicles.
Initially, 28 battery systems and 38 cell modules from the small E-Up car will be used in the pilot project, they state.
When electricity prices are low and solar and wind energy are available in large quantities, this system will temporarily store electrical energy from the grid. When prices are high and supply is scarce, it will return electricity to the grid.
According to Epex, VW is the first automotive group to enter the electricity trading business in Germany.
Temporary storage of energy from renewable sources is considered an important prerequisite for the transition to ‘green’ energy.
Other car manufacturers are already using discarded batteries as temporary storage, with BMW having launched a “farm” in Leipzig in 2017 with as many as 700 BMW i3 batteries for temporary energy storage from four wind turbines it owns.
Audi, on the other hand, has been using lithium-ion batteries from test vehicles in fast charging stations since the end of 2021.
