Current State and the Future of Battery Technologies and Innovations

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As a trained physicist, doctor of electrochemistry and professor in electrical engineering, I have been working on battery energy storage and energy supply systems with renewable energies for almost 30 years. With our team at RWTH Aachen University with a good 70 employees, we work on the fundamental understanding of batteries. This includes models as a basis for digital twins, the analysis in our laboratory for post-mortem analysis for the elucidation of ageing effects or the development of diagnostic algorithms for performance predictions, ageing condition and safety of batteries. Data-driven machine learning methods are also used for this purpose. Furthermore, we are working intensively on the integration of battery storage in mobile applications (cars, buses, ships, trains, etc.) and in stationary applications in the grid for frequency stabilisation, for balancing fluctuating power generation from renewable energies, uninterruptible power supplies or for energy trading. For this purpose, we operate, among other things, a 5 MW battery plant that participates daily in the auctions of primary control power on the electricity exchange. We are currently building our new research centre "Center for Ageing, Reliability and Lifetime Prediction for Electrochemical and Power Electronic Systems (CARL)" with a total construction and equipment volume of 110 million euros. As a member of two science academies, I also lead the central interdisciplinary policy advisory project of the three national science academies "Energy Systems of the Future (ESYS)" on all questions of the energy transition ("Energiewende").