Leag battery storage project in Jänschwalde

The future vibrates in Sven Köhler's office. “I’m used to noise here, but this is new!” says the entrepreneur. The walls shake, the floor lamp flickers, the coffee cup clatters on the plate. Next door, the mining company Leag is building Germany's largest battery storage system - 4,000 megawatt hours of capacity, enough electricity to supply 1.6 million households for four hours.

When Köhler looks out of his window, he sees the past. The routes on which trains deliver the coal from the opencast mine and the pipe bridges over which it is transported to the Jänschwalde power plant, behind them the blocks E and F, which have already been shut down forever. Only the cooling towers that are still active cause steam to rise.