Germany Unveils Europe's Biggest Battery Plant

Germany switched on Europe's largest commercial battery plant on Tuesday, an installation powered by 25,600 lithium-ion batteries that will help stabilise the region's growing supply of renewable energy.

The 6-million-euro plant, the size of a school gymnasium, is designed to help even out short-term fluctuations that sometimes accompany power from renewable sources as Germany continues to raises its share of renewable energy from about 25 percent currently to 40-45 percent by 2025 and 55-60 percent by 2035.

"This is an interesting alternative to conventional power plants and the regional utilities have come up with an interesting project here," German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel told German TV at the plant's opening in Schwerin.

So far the lack of extensive storage capacity has been one of the biggest hurdles to Germany's expansion into renewable energy as power produced by wind and photovoltaic can generally not be easily stored in any sizable quantities.

With a storage capacity of 5 MWh, Schwerin's battery fills that gap.

The plant, next to a power substation operated by local utility, Wemag AG, will address short-term fluctuations that can cause damage and lead to power outages.

The utilities' grid covers an area of 8,600 sq km in northeastern Germany, which received 80 percent of its energy from wind power in 2013. That figure is expected to rise to 100 percent in 2014.

Germany's "Energiewende", or switch to renewable energy away from nuclear and fossil fuels, is the centrepiece of Chancellor Angela Merkel's energy and environment policy.

Since 2000, when green energy incentives were introduced by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, the country's renewables sector has boomed.

Merkel made the policy her own after the 2011 meltdown at Japan's Fukushima reactor by speeding up a nuclear phaseout. But she has drawn criticism for shielding industry from bearing more of the cost of the subsidies for green energy, which have pushed up retail power prices.

(Reporting by Helen Cahill; Editing by Erik Kirschbaum and Sonya Hepinstall)