Adjacent to Åre's grand hotel at Åresjön Lake, there are two containers. The orange one houses a European TV channel and its diesel generator, providing the channel with the extra electricity needed to broadcast, is constantly running. Just next to it is Vattenfall's mobile intelligent energy storage facility with eight connected electric car batteries providing a total of 340 kilowatt hours. The organisers' electric cars and the electric snowmobiles that shuttle visitors to and from the event will be charged quietly and without carbon dioxide emissions.
These are two examples of how to resolve the challenge of providing a large event with electricity. When the local grid is not enough, it is common to use diesel generators to pick up the extra load or to run temporary cable, possibly resulting in an overloaded grid. A mobile energy storage facility that can be moved around to where it's needed may just be the solution. The technology will be tested for the first time in Sweden at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships in Åre.
