The economy and value creation are organized in many different ways, and the range of production, trade, distribution and services is almost unmanageable. The energy supply and the respective paths to the climate goal of "zero emissions" are correspondingly diverse. In most larger companies, the facility management function bundles all site-related concerns and thus plays a decisive role in the transformation of the company towards climate neutrality.

Relevance of the field of application

In the business sector, facility management plays a central role in the transformation towards climate neutrality. It includes the management of buildings and facilities as well as the provision of secondary services for the actual core business of a company.¹ The central tasks of facility management include legal security in operation and ensuring the technical availability of facilities and buildings, the reduction and flexibilization of operating and management costs, and the preservation and value enhancement of facilities and buildings.¹ A comprehensive description of the associated facility services can be found in DIN EN ISO 41011.²

The operational tasks of facility management can be divided into technical, infrastructural and commercial areas.¹ The strategic importance of facility management results from the often underestimated significance of buildings and facilities for the balance sheet of a company: For example, in industrial companies, an average of 30 % to 40 % of fixed assets are accounted for by land and buildings, 10 % of the balance sheet total or 5 % of turnover by real estate and facility costs.¹ Value retention and future security therefore find significant levers in operational and strategic facility management.

The relevance of the function of facility management for the energy transition also results from the energy consumption of the two sectors of industry and commerce, trade and services: Together, they account for 43.5 % of final energy consumption and 73 % of electricity consumption in Germany.³ Just under half of industrial electricity consumption is accounted for by the so-called energy-intensive basic materials industries of glass, cement, paper, steel, aluminium and basic chemicals.^4,5 If this share is subtracted, these two sectors still account for 51 % of electricity consumption.^3,4 The success of the energy transition thus depends to a considerable extent on how well it succeeds in improving the integration of renewable energies and enabling companies to achieve sustainable climate neutrality.

Use of battery storage

Core application areas for the use of battery storage in facility management are currently load shifting and self-consumption maximisation of own electricity generation. Battery storage systems reduce the peak load while the balance of power consumption remains unchanged, thus ensuring a more even and thus more grid-friendly distribution of power demand (intensive grid use)⁶ or reducing the base load while maintaining plannable selective load peaks (atypical grid use)⁷. In properties with their own renewable energy generation plants, they reduce the feed-in to the public grid by means of intermediate storage and thus maximise the self-consumption of the self-generated power.

With the growth of electromobility in corporate fleet management as well as in the workforce, the importance of an attractive charging infrastructure is coming into focus. According to the reference scenario for the market ramp-up of the charging infrastructure in Germany, 2.6 million charging points alone, and thus 25 % of the charging infrastructure, are to be provided by employers.⁸ Without the use of buffer storage, the connected load of each charging pole increases the connected load of the respective location and thus directly increases the volatility of peak load management. On the other hand, a modern charging infrastructure is increasingly becoming a decision criterion on the attractiveness of a company for its employees.

If the company operates its own data centers, the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is also a relevant application area for buffer storage. The in-house production of hydrogen may also require the use of battery storage in order to increase energy efficiency in production. Finally, it is conceivable to provide grid services through the use of battery storage or to trade electricity on the stock exchange and thus generate income through active management of the battery storage.

Performance requirements

The particular challenge for the performance requirements of battery storage in facility management results from the variability of the areas of application. By bundling different applications on the same infrastructure, economies of scale can be leveraged in battery design, resulting in smaller storage sizes than the separate implementation of each individual application - with a corresponding increase in economic efficiency.⁹

The opportunity and complexity driver in this context is that the minimum requirements of the "stacked" use cases add up: The requirements that apply to the individual use cases individually must also be met for the combination of use cases. This results in particular in high requirements for the durability and safety of the battery storage systems used. Ultimately, the combination of specific energy, durability, fast-charging capability and deep discharge resistance determines the actual storage size required and the associated environmental impacts.