ADS-TEC Energy Nears Permit for 1 GW / 4 GWh Battery in Germany

ADS-TEC Energy said on Oct. 28, 2026 that the permitting authority has confirmed all application documents are complete for its planned 1 GW / 4 GWh battery storage plant at the Pulverdingen substation in Markgröningen, Baden-Württemberg, and that the building permit is expected shortly.

The permit has not been issued yet. Grid connection is targeted for 2029, according to the company's statement and ESS News. The plant would discharge at full power for about four hours, which the company equates to the daily electricity use of roughly 400,000 single-family homes.

For the grid, this is a very large block of flexible capacity in one of Germany's industrial states. A 1 GW plant can absorb midday solar surplus and release it when supply tightens, and the company says it can also support frequency control and grid restoration after an outage. The scale has moved quickly: ESS News reported that the project was first announced in September 2025 at 1 GW / 2 GWh, so the storage duration has doubled.

Financing depends on a stake sale

ADS-TEC said the investment typically runs from the high hundreds of millions of euros to around EUR 1 billion for a facility of this size. The Nasdaq-listed company said its investor process is well advanced and that it plans to sell a majority stake in the project company to international infrastructure investors and European energy firms. ESS News reported that financing and partnership agreements are to be finalized once the building permit is issued.

ADS-TEC would stay on as a minority shareholder, technology provider and long-term service operator. It plans to equip the plant with its own battery management system, which it has developed in-house for more than 15 years. The company said German suppliers stand ready to provide the batteries, switchgear, transformers and extra-high-voltage equipment, and argued that this reduces reliance on battery management suppliers based in Asia.

Revenue assumptions and what is still open

The company cited third-party market data showing that large German battery plants recently earned about EUR 150,000 to 250,000 per megawatt per year from wholesale trading and balancing markets. It stressed that these figures are not a forecast or financial guidance, and that its share will depend on the final partnership structure. ESS News added that ancillary service markets face cannibalization through 2029, so bankability will rest on a mix of day-ahead, intraday and possibly tolled revenues.

Several points remain unconfirmed: the date of the building permit, the identity of the buyers of the majority stake, the final investment figure and the named battery supplier. As Voltgrid reported, Germany added about 8.2 GWh of battery storage in the first nine months of 2026, and 4 GWh is about half of that nine-month total. Another large German project, Giga Storage's 1.4 GWh Albatross battery, is already financed and uses CATL engineering.