Germany is proactively tackling the issues of intermittent power that come with getting 23 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

Tobias Rothacher, senior manager of renewable energies for Germany Trade & Invest will present to an international audience at the Hannover Expo Wednesday about what the country is doing with energy storage and how it will build the future for continued growth in the solar photovoltaic and wind energy industries.

The building blocks of Germany’s renewable energy future are batteries.

“We are planning to support the installation of battery systems which are installed along with a PV system,” Rothacher writes in an email. “The incentive is planned to consist of interest reduced loans form the state owned bank KfW as well as capex incentive on the purchase price.”

The details of the incentives are still be hammered out, he said.

Renewable energy provided 23 percent of Germnay’s power in 2012 and 9.3 percent more than it provided in 2011. Solar photovoltaic installations surged 47.7 percent from the previous year even as government incentives for the technology waned. Solar now provides 4.7 percent of the country’s electricity.

“With a rising share of fluctuating renewable sources, three distinct areas of storage opportunities become more and more necessary,” Rothacher said.

First, consumers need to incorporate storage into their distributed rooftop systems. Second, utilities will need storage for grid management and third, the country will need to find a way to store surplus power generated in the summer for the winter months.

“There are generally two perspectives for potential storage implementation: The electricity end user’s perspective and the utility perspective,” Rothacher said.

The end-user market is already developing in Germany. As people and businesses invest in renewable energy technologies, they realize they can shave their peak usage with storage and manage their energy use better.

“The situation for utilities is quite more complex however, as it is very difficult to plan long-term storage projects in such a dynamic market and pricing environment,” Rothacher said. “However, we see the first pioneering utilities entering already and testing business models in this area.”