The salt battery in the Mercedes karma cycle
Are you wondering what Mercedes has to do with salt batteries? Daimler AG was significantly involved in the development of the salt battery for use in electric cars around the turn of the millennium. You can find the whole story at the bottom of our page on salt battery technology.
What the product parent of Sterngarage in Heerbrugg once used as a so-called ZEBRA battery in its electric cars, then sold this whole area and now found another application, is coming back to the Mercedes garage. Life apparently moves in circles even for car companies. Karma? Coincidence?
Up under the roof, in the tyre warehouse, under a 150 kWp PV system, there has recently been a "Mercedes salt battery" from innovenergy. Of course, it has an emergency power supply in case the grid should ever fail. A salitrust is enthroned in the roof beams: eight batteries with 72 kWh storage capacity.
This secures the garage's server and IT landscape. If the power fails, no employee notices anything. Working life continues as normal, because within 0.2 seconds the entire garage switches to emergency power from the battery.
Unprofitable feed-in and expensive electricity purchases are optimised by intelligent control for the highest possible self-consumption. This has enabled the garage to significantly reduce its electricity bill.
In addition, this salt battery storage system is a perfect preparation for the coming boom in eMobility. More charging stations will be needed across the country in the future. In any case, the Sterngarage is a pioneer, a showcase project, a garage that is a force to be reckoned with and is already thinking about its grandchildren today.
If you ask Mr Bischofberger, owner of Sterngarage in Heerbrugg, why he chose a salt battery from innovenergy and not a lithium-ion battery, he raises his eyebrows enthusiastically and says, as if shot out of a pistol:
"Because I wanted to make a safe and long-term investment. I don't want my business to go up in flames at some point. Moreover, I want to be able to look my children in the eye in 10 years' time. I want to leave this world clean. And because with this salt battery storage system, I can upgrade at any time. Even after tens of years, I can add batteries. So I am and will remain open to the future upwards."