Real estate developer ERNE Gruppe and architecture firm FlexBase are hoping to start construction on a data centre project in Switzerland next year, which will include a ‘non-flammable and non-explosive’ 500MW energy storage unit.
The companies have entered into a strategic partnership and submitted an updated building application for the project, FlexBase Technology Center Laufenburg, on which they hope to start construction in 2025.
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The proposal is to utilise an existing building formerly occupied by the transmission system operator (TSO) of Switzerland, Swissgrid, and build a new one opposite it as a technology centre ‘of national importance’.
The companies also want to build what they claimed is the ‘world’s largest and most modern battery storage facility of its kind’ on an area of around 20,000 mw2. It would use ‘non-flammable and non-explosive’ technology and be over 500MW in size. The energy storage facility would be complemented by a data centre for artificial intelligence (AI).
Note that the building is in the Swiss municipality of Laufenburg, in the Canton or Argau, while right across the border is a town in Germany of the same name.
ERNE Gruppe is a real estate developer while FlexBase designs and implements floating foundations used to for construction on water, it says on its site.
The firm’s claims about it being the largest battery storage project in the world is clearly fanciful. The Moss Landing battery energy storage system (BESS) in California, US, is 750MW/3,000MWh while the Edwards Sandborne solar-plus-storage in the same state has a 3,287MWh BESS.
It would however be by far the largest BESS in Switzerland if built. Grid-scale projects in the country have been in the low double-digit MW/MWh size range at most, including ones recently commissioned by EWS AG/MW Storage, Axpo and Thurplus.
