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Feldheim, a 150-Person German Village, Powered Entirely by Renewables

posted by martyb on Thursday December 03 2015, @07:28AM   
from the but-how-many-electric-vehicles? dept.

Tree Hugga writes:

The electricity is sourced from solar panels, wind turbines, and heat from biogas. In addition they have a backup wood chip furnace. They also have a fairly beefy battery of 10 MW capacity to help level the fluctuations in production. The village runs its own grid and pays less for energy.

News articles: The Independent, The Huffington Post, GreenBiz.

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Original Submission

• Re:energy cost of infrastructure creation? Re:energy cost of infrastructure creation? (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @08:49AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @08:49AM (#271255)

  It would not surprise me at all, if their per person energy consumption is equal or higher than that of the person connected to a 1GW electric plant, because the energy investment in the creation of said plant is probably much lower per MW produced energy than all this small-scale stuff.

  Why should the energy required to build a windmiss be considerably higher than the energy to build a conventional plant? Note that they definitely saved on the grid infrastructure (since local production needs shorter lines and less technical management infrastructure; it also reduces the transport losses BTW), and unlike conventional power plants, they also don't need to expend energy/cost on fuel delivery (unless when they need to power up that backup wood chip furnace; but even then, I guess the wood is from nearby, reducing the transport cost considerably, both in terms of energy and of money).

  Note that if you calculate the cost of the conventional plant, you also have to include all the cost of fuel production. You think getting oil, gas or coal out of the earth comes for free? Not to mention the additional cost for renaturation afterwards (or the indirect cost caused by not doing that).

  Also if the fuel is transported on the road and/or railway, you have to add the hidden cost of additional wear and tear of the roads or rails caused by the transport, which implies increased maintenance needs with the corresponding money and energy cost. While transport by pipeline adds the cost of building and maintaining the pipeline system.

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• Re:energy cost of infrastructure creation? (Score: 1) by bart on Thursday December 03 2015, @09:13AM

  by bart (2844) on Thursday December 03 2015, @09:13AM (#271265)

  You make good points, though you forget about the energy-costs of the batteries and solar cells.

  But my point is, there should be far more system calculations, where honest attempts are being made to calculate total system costs, instead of one or other special interest group promoting their agenda. Me personally, I like the idea of small scale energy infrastructure, but I'd like to know that it's actually energy efficient on a global scale, instead of just moving the problems somewhere else (like to China, where they build the solar panels and batteries)

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