Electricity costs money. Load peaks cost more.
Electricity prices change from hour to hour, and grid charges are based on your highest load. Storing energy and shifting loads in a targeted way lowers both cost items. It also prepares you for the new grid charge system that is due to apply in Germany from 2029.
Battery storage
Battery storage is no longer a technology of the future. For industrial and commercial businesses, it is now one of the most economically attractive levers for lowering energy costs. A single storage system can take on several tasks at once:
- Peak shaving: the battery covers short load peaks and so lowers the capacity charge, and in future the grid capacity you book.
- Using price differences: charge in cheap hours, discharge in expensive ones, especially effective with a dynamic electricity tariff.
- Atypical grid use: companies that shift their peak load out of the grid operator’s peak-load windows can obtain a reduced individual grid charge under Section 19(2) StromNEV.
- Higher self-consumption: solar power from your own roof is stored and used in operations later instead of being fed into the grid at a low price.
- Additional revenue: spare storage capacity can be marketed on the balancing energy or electricity market.
The combination is what counts: only when all applications are coordinated does a storage system pay back within a few years.
Thermal storage
Heat is much cheaper to store than electricity. Combined with an electrode boiler or a high-temperature heat pump, electricity is converted into heat in cheap hours and stored, for example in hot water, steam or solid-media storage. Production draws on it whenever it needs the heat. This makes process heat flexible and independent of the gas price. Find out more on our page Electrification of process heat.
Load flexibility
Many consumers in a plant do not have to run exactly when they do today: compressed air, cooling, ventilation, pumps or individual production steps can often be shifted by minutes to hours. An energy management system with load and price forecasting controls these units automatically without noticeably disrupting production. Load flexibility usually costs little and is often the first step before sizing a storage system.
New grid charges from 2029: what changes
The German Electricity Grid Charges Ordinance (StromNEV) expires at the end of 2028. The Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) is redefining grid charges from 1 January 2029 in a procedure called “AgNes” (general electricity grid charge system). The draft has been available since 6 August 2026, and the final decision is planned for the end of 2026. Under the draft:
- Capacity price instead of demand charge: companies consuming more than 100,000 kWh a year will book a grid capacity and pay a price per kilowatt and year for it. Exceeding the booked capacity incurs a surcharge. Storage and controllable loads help you book tightly and stay safely within the limit.
- Transition for individual grid charges: existing agreements under Section 19(2) StromNEV, for example for baseload consumers, are to remain valid for existing customers until the end of 2031, subject to certain conditions. After that, discounts are to be linked more closely to flexible operation that supports the grid.
- Storage: the grid charge exemption under Section 118(6) EnWG remains in place for storage systems that start operating by 4 August 2029 and can document their investment decision in time. A capacity charge is planned for storage built later.
- Time-variable grid charges: dynamic grid charges are to be regulated in a separate decision and introduced from 2030 at the earliest.
For your investment decision, this means a storage or flexibility project should be calculated both under today’s rules and under the system from 2029. That is exactly what we do for you.
As of October 2026. Sources: Bundesnetzagentur, AgNes draft decision (ref. GBK-25-01-1#3) of 6 August 2026 and interim status of 27 May 2026. The decision is not yet final; details may change.
Our services
White paper: battery storage for industry
Our white paper explains how peak shaving, price arbitrage and atypical grid use can be combined, why battery cell prices reached a record low in 2025, and how an example project pays back within a few years. It is currently available in German and can be requested on our German page.