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100% off-grid renewable energy for German village of Feldheim

German Village goes Off-grid with Renewable Energy  28 Oct 14 If Germany has taken a pioneering though risky role in shifting to renewable energy, then the tiny village of Feldheim – population 150 – is at its vanguard.

The hamlet near Berlin is Germany’s first to have left the national grid and switched to 100 per cent local, alternative energy, swearing off fossil fuels and nuclear power decades before the rest of the country plans to near the same goal.

Electricity now comes from a wind park towering over its gently rolling fields and reaches homes through Feldheim’s own mini smart grid.

More than 99 per cent of the wind power is sold into the national system, along with electricity from a solar park on a former Soviet military base.

As winter nears, people here will heat their homes from a biogas plant powered by local pig and cattle manure and shredded corn, while on the coldest days a woodchip plant will also burn forestry waste.

The villagers took bank loans and state subsidies to build the system, in partnership with green power company Energiequelle, but say it is paying off as electricity and heating bills have been slashed.

Feldheim no longer pays for 160,000 litres of heating oil a year, said Werner Frohwitter of the local energy co-operative.

“This money is no longer going to Arab sheiks or (Russian President) Vladimir Putin,” he said at the village 80km southwest of Berlin. “This money is now staying right here.”………

Tiny Feldheim, ever proud to be at the cutting edge, has set up an electric car power station and ordered a 10 MW lithium-ion battery from South Korea. When the giant device arrives next year, it will give the village a 48-hour emergency supply, but that is not its main purpose. For most of the year it will be rented out to a regional power company as a buffer against grid fluctuations. -……….. http://sourceable.net/grid-german-village-renewable-energy/#sthash.QEh0YEwd.dpuf

October 29, 2014 - Posted by | general

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