1. VISIT ENERGY SUPPLY Company - Stadtwerk Meiningen (SM) - www.Stadwerke-Meiningen.de
We meet the Head of Renewables, Carmen Werner and their Communications Director.
Stadwerke Meiningen is a great example of a decentralised energy economy – following what we learnt from them the group strongly felt that our UK communities and local authorities must learn from the German local energy company model.
The company is split into gas, energy, heat, renewable energy, water, waste water, leisure swimming pool and camping site, parking, car natural gas supply and housing association in summary they serve 22000 residents from one town and four villages. There are perhaps 100 other companies like this across the country and the company is owned by the municipality. It is 100% community interest and has developed since 1991. They work with other regional energy companies for energy buying and procurement. Their vision is to supply residents with efficient energy. They supply 40% of the energy to the households but the goal is to supply 100% by 2020/25 and is somewhat dependant on national laws such as currently the public are against deep geothermal (which they consulted on) because of the concern of earthquakes, somewhat influenced by fracking which is a practice that everyone is against in Germany.
SM produce 25% of their own gas, they own the local electricity grid network and manage;
- 16km of heat pipes (installed since 1996)
- 150km of gas pipes
- 180km waste water pipes
- 200km of water pipes
- 300km of electricity line
- Plus heat generation plants and power plants, including heat pumps to 23 homes, solar thermal on flats, biogas CHP, PV and electric cars.
The car park was constructed for the solar array and of course has an electric Stadwerke-Meiningen supplies 22,000 residents with heat and electricity – in total they supply 40% of their own energy to these households - their goal is to supply 100% of their own energy by 2020/25.
They have invested 35million Euros on energy infrastructure. The annual profit is 4-5million a year reinvested in the local economy. On average just 3 to 4% people have problems paying their bills and as a last resort they can be threatened with being cut off. They run a customer service day in a cafe once a month - they talk about energy saving. As a company they prefer to put solar on roofs and brownfield sites - they have two locations where they pay roof rent otherwise it's all owned by them. They think fields should remain for food production. In total they generate 3MW of solar on 29 locations. They have three free electric car points and a fleet of electric cars.
CHP VISIT to their largest SM natural gas plant making 18 MW of heat and 9.6MW of electricity. They have backup systems that they use to ensure the heating works with boilers and pumps. They heat and provide hot water to 2000 homes from this facility. The homes have a metering system.
SOLAR System at SM is thin film from First Solar there is 640 kW located on their car park since 2010. The car park was constructed for the solar array and of course has an electric car charger - we test drive the Nissan electric van. On 1 august the solar fit laws changed so that any solar scheme above 10 kW will have to sell their energy to local people to buy/offset. In the UK Good Energy are investigating this and it's called sleeving and intermediary companies will manage this.
BIOGAS PLANT VISIT located adjacent to a village near to the town of Meiningen and run by Stadtwerk Meiningen (SM) the local authority’s energy company. The plant was built in 2012 costing 6million Euros to build and the Chief Engineer estimates a 15 year pay back. It is rated at 1.2MW using raw materials that include a mix of green waste (maize), manure (slurry) and silage, in total they require up to 50 tons a day (20 tons of maize). It is a constant process and the plant has operated continuously since 2012. There is a mixing area where the materials are shredded then mixed with liquid manure then moved to a fermentation chamber for up to 5 weeks to ferment at 44degrees. We look at the pumps to stir the materials. It goes into the fermentation chambers for 5 weeks being mixed and moved through three separate chambers then onto digester chambers. The chambers are 6 meters deep. The walls of the chambers are insulated and the top cone has an air layer that protects the gas collection layer against the weather.
Biogas winning facts;
- The company buys the manure from the farmers and then returns the end product back to the farmers for free to fertilise their land.
- The gas powers a CHP plant that generates power into the grid - the heat is reused in the plant for the process.
- They generate 10gwh of gas that is piped to a local Combined Heat Power plant that is also fed by the other two regions Biogas Plants.
- They get a subsidy of 25 cents/kwhour. They make their income from selling the gas and the subsidy.
BUILDING EDUCTION COLLEGE VISIT Centre of Excellence BTZ Rohr. We meet Herr Manfred Teatzer the Vice President of the Technology Centre at Rohr. The site dates back to a nunnery in C815 - on site therefore there are monuments and listed buildings. The site requires about 1million Euros investment a year in building management and technology. BTZ Rohr hosts oversees courses - they have Chinese Students at the moment on welding and energy courses. We are interested to know more about their Energy Courses both basic and masters... We are offered to visit local sites and areas of interest such as painting, woodwork, car, welding, 3d printing, the bakery, butchers, hairdressers, monastery, electronics, fire fighting and gas management. We visit the boiler maintenance department. Every 12 years it is law in Germany to have your gas installation checked for insurance reasons. At BTZ Rohr there is a maintenance course and the Education Centre ensures that the training centre is kept up to date with technology and has the latest boilers to work on for gas, LPG, oil, biomass and airsource pumps. Herr Teatzer informs us that a new boiler installation in a home is approximately 4500 Euros.
Alongside the biomass boiler systems we are shown a thermal storage tank using a salt system to store the heat (similar to a pocket warmer), Herr Teatzer explains that this is a highly efficient system storing more energy per kilogram in the salt melting process. (H & M Heizkoerper Dingelstaedt is the manufacturer of the salt heat store).
INSULATION Centre of Excellence BTZ Rohr. We are shown a training area for refurbishing listed buildings. There is a theoretical listed building installed in the main exhibition area. There is one room full of example buildings demonstrating external and internal insulation, extensions, listed building insulation etc...there are faults carefully put into this training facility to help with the learning process - it's an insulation centre of excellence - we all agree that this should be replicated in the UK. Video available; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Mz7--ozLw&feature=youtu.be
LARGE SCALE SOLAR on the way back to base we visit the Rohr 10MW solar farm - we walk around the boundary, the grass is growing under the panels, the inverter buildings are humming (but in no way loud) and the local grid is adjacent to the field. Local houses and businesses also have solar on their roofs. We wonder why SM are not buying this energy
directly? It’s because the rules have now changed in Germany (since 1 August) and any solar project over 10kW has to be sold onto a user (that makes it good for them to buy)!
