Each year, with the Cross Border Award, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) of Lower Bavaria, the Chamber of Commerce of Upper Austria and the Chamber of Commerce of South Bohemia honour outstanding collaborations between regions. In 2020, the award was presented to the Technology Centre Energy at Landshut University of Applied Sciences for its work in the CompStor and FSTORE projects, each of which established cross-border centres of competence for innovation and research into the energy supply of the future. “Issues surrounding the storage and supply of energy don’t end at national borders, but are of existential European interest,” explains the Scientific Director of the TZE, Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Pettinger. “The established collaborations bring together knowledge about battery technologies on the Bavarian, Upper Austrian and South Bohemian sides and create impulses for innovations that strengthen the respective regions from both the economical and scientific perspectives.”
In the CompStor project (Competence Centre for Energy Storage, co-financed by the INTERREG V-A Programme Austria – Bavaria 2014-2020), the TZE cooperated with the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences in Wels. With an investment volume of 6.6 million euros, the project partners laid down the foundations for cross-border cooperation in the areas of battery technology, processing technology and cell production, as well as electrical engineering. The project allowed the TZE to build new laboratories and test stands in which lithium-ion battery cells are manufactured and tested, while the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences installed equipment for high-voltage and high-current testing. This infrastructure provides the basis for a cross-border centre of research and innovation, which not only initiates the training of young scientists, but also strengthens the region through internationalisation and a high degree of research expertise in the field of battery storage technologies.
In the FSTORE project (Cross-border Platform for Research in Future Energy Storage Systems and their Integration, co-financed by the INTERREG V programme Bavaria – Czech Republic 2014-2020 “ETZ goal”), the TZE collaborated with the New Technologies Research Centre of the University of West Bohemia. The focus was on research into redox flow batteries and their potential use in power grid stabilisation for the storage of renewable energies. With this project, the TZE has established another area of research in addition to lithium-ion battery research, and has expanded its cooperation with the Czech Republic.
“With the site of the TZE in Ruhstorf an der Rott in the heart of the three-countries region of Germany-Austria-Czech Republic, we can offer the ideal conditions for international collaboration. We consider it our task to encourage joint research and development,” says Dr. Reinhart Schwaiberger, Managing Director of the TZE. The successful implementation of this mission in the form of the two projects is now being honoured by the Lower Bavarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce with the Cross Border Award 2020. According to the laudation of the Chamber of Commerce, the projects stand “for a cross-border bridge-building from science that has a positive impact on business practice in the three-countries region".
Photo free to use where source is indicated: Chamber of Commerce of Lower Bavaria
