Off-grid German village banks on wind, sun,
pig manure
26 October 2014, by Frank Zeller
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 (40,000
gallons) of heating oil a year, said Werner
Frohwitter of the local energy cooperative.
"This money is no longer going to Arab sheiks or
(Russian President) Vladimir Putin," he said at the
village 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Berlin.
"This money is now staying right here."
Werner Frohwitter, spokesperson for the "Freier
Energieforum Feldheim" association stands at the bio
gas plant in the energy-sufficient village of Feldheim,
80km south of Berlin
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 percent
local, alternative energy, swearing off fossil fuels
and nuclear power decades before the rest of the
country plans to near the same goal.
Green vision, risky gamble
Depending on who you listen to, Germany's
"Energiewende" or energy shift is a bright green
vision for a zero-carbon future or a reckless gamble
that will drive Europe's biggest economy against
the wall.
It is certainly Germany's biggest infrastructure
project since World War II and its greatest national
challenge since reunification 25 years ago.
Europe's major export power plans to switch off its
last nuclear plant in 2022 and by mid-century meet
80 percent of electricity demand with renewables,
up from one quarter now.
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 percent 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
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meanwhile suing the government for billions in
foregone nuclear power profits.
There have also been major technical hitches to
building giant offshore windfarms, and local
protests have slowed to a crawl the building of highvoltage power lines between Germany's windy
north and industrial south.
Future tools
The biggest irony has been that the energy shift,
intended to slow climate change, has driven up
carbon emissions for the past two years.
The problem lies in the fickle nature of renewables.
When the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't
blow, conventional power is needed to fill the
gap—ideally with relatively clean and flexible gas
plants.
A wind turbine operates in Feldheim
Windfarms have mushroomed, especially along the
gusty northern coast, and solar dishes now cover
homes, barns and factories—all encouraged by stateguaranteed returns for 20 years.
But amid the rapid and often chaotic build-up, the
energy shift has been hit by delays, cost overruns
and unforeseen consequences.
A bio gas plant at a farm in Feldheim
For one, green surcharges have made power bills
the second highest in the EU, worrying businesses
that compete internationally, especially as the
economy is losing steam.
However, utilities—which have taken a beating as a
glut of renewables has slashed wholesale power
prices—have shuttered some under-utilised gas
plants and filled the gap with cheaper and dirtier
coal.
"The cost of the energy transition for the economy
and consumers will continue to rise," Germany's
Chemical Industry Association warned this month.
Power companies E.ON, RWE and Vattenfall are
This trend has worsened with the collapse of
Europe's market for carbon emissions, which was
designed to put a cost on environmental damage,
but no longer makes it expensive for companies to
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pollute.
As a result, while clean energy took the top share
at 27.7 percent in the year's first nine months, it
only narrowly beat lignite coal at 26.3 percent,
according to the Agora research institute.
For most of the year it will be rented out to a
regional power company as a buffer against grid
fluctuations.
© 2014 AFP
Chancellor Angela Merkel this month urged reforms
to Europe's emissions trading scheme, saying that
putting a price on carbon is "the central instrument
to fight climate change in Europe".
A range of other future tools are being debated to
save the Energiewende, still a broadly popular
project backed by all political parties.
Wind turbines operate near a barley field in Feldheim
Ideas range from paying gas plants to remain on
standby for when they are needed, to better home
insulation and more electric cars, to creating large
energy storage systems using water reservoirs and
huge batteries.
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.
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June 2017 from https://phys.org/news/2014-10-off-grid-german-village-banks-sun.html
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