BMW continues to invest in these factories to ultimately use only carbon-neutral energy for its vehicle production.
Who said that electric car batteries were not recyclable? At BMW, the circle has come full circle. At its Leipzig site, in Germany, the Bavarian manufacturer uses old batteries from its electric model, the i3, to power electricity to his factory.
i3 batteries store electricity produced by wind turbines
To operate the Leipzig site, the Bavarian manufacturer installed four wind turbines to transform the wind that blows in Germany into electricity. But unlike the factory, the wind turbines run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To avoid losing the electricity produced in the evenings and weekends, BMW has therefore set up an energy park, too. called a battery farm, made up of old batteries from its i3 model, in order to store the surplus and be able to reuse it later. During the day, when the factory is in full swing and its electricity demand is increasing sharply, the energy stored by the i3 batteries at night is redistributed to power the production and assembly lines.
But this wind energy is not enough to completely supply the site with electricity. Indeed, it takes energy to produce millions of BMW and Mini cars every year! From 2025 at the latest, the manufacturer wants the production lines of its factories to use CO2-neutral energy. Moreover, recently, another production site cut off its supply of polluting natural gas.
BMW now also uses a biomass power plant for its plant in Steyr
Indeed, a few days ago, in the presence of more than a thousand employees, the international star and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger shut down the gas supply to the Steyr factoryin Austria, before installing a new, more environmentally friendly electrical installation. A choice far from being anecdotal because the Terminator was born on Austrian soil.
Since then, the Steyr site now depends on heat from a biomass power plant located nearby, a little less than a kilometer away. It is managed by the two state energy suppliers, Energie AG Oberösterreich Erzeugung GmbH and EVN Wärme GmbH, in their joint subsidiary, Bioenergie Steyr GmbH.
To boost energy production at the Steyr plant, BMW is also building an additional heat production plant equipped with a 10 megawatt biomass boiler at its site. And to power it, the builder will use wood chips from nearby forests. “By switching to 100% heat from regenerative biomass, we are today taking a major step forward. Our factory now produces both its electricity and its heat for its regular operations from renewable energies”, indicates the director of the factory, Klaus von Moltke.
Since 2006, the complex has reduced its energy requirements per engine by almost half.
Source: www.autoplus.fr
