VILVOORDE, Belgium — Hidden behind two giant cooling towers in a mothballed gas power plant, a sea of rectangular boxes holds the key to solving one of the EU’s most vexing challenges: Energy is being squandered.
The containers, each weighing 26 tons and stretching as far as the eye can see, are packed with lithium batteries. Together, they will soon make up the largest battery storage park in Europe.
The EU desperately needs the project.
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The bloc is building renewable energy at a record pace, but it can’t always use the power that wind and solar plants create. Sometimes the demand isn’t there, so the energy is simply lost as electricity can’t always be stored.
