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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Alphatool on Thursday December 03 2015, @11:53AM
TFA says they pay less for energy, but that is such a distorted figure that it's actually offensive. The village has received so many subsidies that it's hard to keep track of them all, but here are a couple of them:
For the biomass plant: The plant cost nearly 2 million euros and much of that was provided by government subsidies. [abc.net.au]
For the storage system: A significant proportion of that funding, €5 million, came in the form of a grant [cleantechnica.com]
The other thing is that even though they are technically only powered by renewables, they are completly dependent on a mostly coal powered grid to make it all possible - The village is off grid only if we put the village at one isolated end connected to the cooperative, and the cooperative is connected to the grid [renewablesinternational.net]
The point being, a village can have it's own grid and pay less for energy if other people pay for all of the components and the village grid is connected to the national grid. Doesn't sound like a good deal for everyone else though...
I'll finish with a quote from a pro renewable energy website:
"Feldheim is making headlines largely because it is so close to Berlin, so journalists make the trip" [renewablesinternational.net]"