Owen Humphries - WYG Group
There have been many recent achievements and advancements within the micro and small scale renewable energy sector. Likewise the energy storage technology sector has similarly advanced with better and improved battery performance.
Solar PV, wind, biogas and other renewable energy sources reduce consumption of fossil fuels but also pose challenges to the electrical grid because their power generation fluctuates, heightening the need for better battery technology to store their energy until it's needed to feed the grid.
Undoubtedly, storing energy produced from a 50 MWe wind farm, or even a 5 MWe solar farm in a neat compact form still remains a long-term objective. Whilst this can be practically achieved; for example by means of using surplus off peak energy generation to pump water to a high level storage reservoir for release during peak energy demands via a hydroelectric scheme; such a civil engineering feat is disproportionately expensive and not without it socio-political problems - likewise the mechanical and process engineering feat associated with the large-scale hydrolysis of water into hydrogen for re-combustion via a gas turbine. However energy storage generated by modest renewable energy arrays is becoming feasible.
However such technological advancement is pointless without application; and any such application needs to be one that captures popular and widespread acceptance.
After much discussion and debate centered around smart grids, and their potential application, across numerous EU nations, in particular Germany; Suhl town administration - Thüringen Region; Germany - decided to innovate and pioneer its own bespoke smart grid. Completed earlier this year this is reported to be one of the first sizeable demonstrations of smart grid applications in Germany, and potentially the EU.
The scheme was focused upon a small community hospital. The facility was largely an administration centre with limited patient beds; i.e. a base for the dispatch of “district nurses” to visit patients across the community. As such the facility had a much lower energy requirement than more traditional hospitals. Following consultation and initial design concept, the scheme comprised:
- c150 kWe roof mounted Solar PV
- c50 kWe DC battery storage
- three electric cars with car charging facilities
- built environment energy saving efficiency measure
The initial phase was installed for c€500,000 and basically works as follows.
By day, solar PV is used to provide up to 100% of the facility’s electrical energy requirements, with surplus electrical energy being diverted for storage within a large battery array. The staff use the electric vehicles to carry out their assignments around the district – typical vehicle range 150km, typical daily requirement 50km. By night, the battery array, being charged, is used to provide up to 100% of the facility’s out of hours electrical energy and, more importantly, recharge the fleet of electric vehicles.
This scheme, which was implemented with a roll-out of energy efficiency and energy saving measures across the building, has proved popular amongst the administration’s employees – albeit despite some initial concern of using the electric vehicles on long journeys. However, the town Mayor, keen to engage with its residents has since rolled out the weekend use of the electric vehicles to the town’s residents at a nominal hire rate.
Given the success of the scheme a second stage is now currently being planned. This will include installing smart vertical axle wind turbines to increase generating capacity to enable the DC battery bank to be extended and the entire vehicle fleet converted to electric.
Since the installation of the first phase, the town Mayor noted that the cost they paid for phase 1 was high – perhaps the cost of being a pioneer! Unit prices for solar PV, battery packs, and electric vehicle have all significantly dropped – up to 25% reduction for the electric vehicles – and significantly more for solar PV. Despite this Phase 1 is estimated to commercially pay back within a 7-8 year period.
It should also be noted that interestingly, owing to its altitude, the region of Thüringen is situated in a position which would approximately be equivalent to Manchester – a place not necessarily renowned for its long sunny days!
Having visited this facility and observed the practicalities of such a scheme at first hand – and indeed its simplicity - we see no reason why such concepts should not be actively promoted to UK public and private sector who might likewise benefit from the long term commercial advantages of a small scale smart grid.
Mark Summerfield - Burnley College
On our last full day of the trip we were visited the local town hall at Zella-Mehlis where we were invited to meet the mayor who spoke excellent English and gave us a passionate presentation on the highly innovative solar based project LSIM. The Mayor and his team have converted a former city hospital into a facility which incorporates retirement homes, doctors’ offices and health facilities in a sustainable and energy efficient way, incorporating the latest in Smart meter technology and energy generation and storage facilities.
The aim of the project was to make the facility as close to independent from the grid as possible; to this end they have installed 140kW of solar modules which have generated 50,000 euro in feed in tariff income in the 9 months since they were commissioned. In addition, 3 electric vehicles were purchased, together with charging stations which are fed from the solar modules and backed up with a 64kW battery capability to further reduce reliance on the grid.
The group was given the opportunity to drive the vehicles which were very impressive in performance. Range of the vehicles is around 120km per charge, and the majority of the charge is obtained free from the solar panels, if the cars were to be charged using mains electricity the cost would be around 3-4 euro per charge. The vehicles are free from road tax and can reach speeds of around 130km/hr (about 80 mph).
The council had constructed a car port to increase available roof space to mount the PV modules onto. The project prompted discussions within the Burnley College delegates - would it be possible for the college to implement a similar scheme? Would this give us the opportunity to create our own solar farm? Could the college purchase a small pool of electric vehicles for the use of TDOs and college staff for use when on college business?
The delegates from the Brighton Energy co-operative were similarly inspired, the mayor was invited to visit their scheme and a commitment was made to share the output statistics for the two schemes via the internet so that a comparison of performance could be made over the coming years. The mayor also committed to attend the renewables event in Brighton in 2013.
Following lunch the group was given the opportunity to visit the winter sport centre at Oberhof where a large solar thermal system is installed as part of the building fascia, this multi stage system was providing stored hot water in a series of 500 litre tanks.
Unfortunately circumstances prevented the planned visit to view the Electricity and heat generation plant in Zella-Mehlis, however this gave us time to complete our final blog entries and get ready for a nearby acoustic guitar concert later that evening.
Rowan Langley - Funky Renewables
The main item of business this morning was a presentation by the Mayor of Zella-Mehlis on the municipal electric Car Hire Scheme. The scheme showed off best practices in technology and methods of local and regional financing, and also best practice in demonstrating a novel technology and gaining public acceptance.
The base fot the project is the former miunicipal hospital site, which has been redevoloped into a number of Doctors surgeries, the ambulance station and an old peoples' home. Roof space on the site, together with a new cover for a length of parking bays has been used to mount a 140 KWp solar PV array. A mix of thin film and polycrytaline panels was chose, thin film being used on structures unable to take a high additional load. The panels feed a DC power bus linking the PV panels, an option for on site wind ( a number of vertical axis wind machines are presently under consideration) and an option for feed in from a Combined Heat and power installation which would provide heat for both the hospital site and the adjacent town hall. A battery bank of some 64KWh capacity is the final item on the DC power bus which serves to regulate the load and keep the system available on days of poor sun.
The majority of car journeys made on municipal business are around 60 Kilometres of less, while the range of current electric vehicles is around 120 Km or so, meaning that the majority of the cities car journeys are well within the capability of a electric car. While confidence was initially lacking, this was address in two ways. First of all a policy decision was made in council department that journeys within this range were 1, to be made by using the pool cars, and 2, the electric car was to be used. Secondly, an open day was hosted showing both the three electric cars in use together with a range of electric vehicles borrowed for the event.
The performance of the three cars is such that once they have been driven, the driver become great enthusiasts for them. Acceleration is better than a conventional car – in a contest with a Porsche, the first five metres or so belong to the electric car. The car is silent. They have adaptors, so in one case when the driver was anxious about running out of charge on a trip to the next town, they were able to ask to plug in at a garage (to a standard 220v mains socket) and enjoy a coffee in the shop while topping up the battery.
The scheme has been running since July 2011, so just over a years experience has been gained, through all seasons. It has been found on the typical journeys made the cars only need to be re-charged avery 3 days. Some different considerations apply in wintoer – one trades range for warmth as any car heating is using battery energy which cannot then be used for travel. A typical full charge costs around EUR3.
Three vehicles are in use, one a commercial offering from Mitsubishi, and the other two from a company in Leipzig which has taken two lightweight city cars, removed the engine, any power hungry systems such as power steering, electric heating etc, and fitted an electric power plant in the engine bay. The one unit retains the gearbox and clutch between engine and transmission, to give a high torque low speed for starting and reduced torque and higher speed for normal running. This has a side effect of making adjustment to electric driving easier for a driver used to a conventional car. As an aid to comfort, however, the experimental cars incorporate a small Webasto type oil burning heater for use in very cold weather.
The scheme is operated by a city run company. The present mayor, a councillor of some 20 years standing, was a prime mover in establishing the scheme, and recently stood down as the director of the company's board of management. Under German law, the Mayor must be a member of the second board, the governing board of such a company.
The scheme had been financed in the following ways. There is rent received from the re-used buildings on the hospital site. The closure of the hospital and redevelopment of the site made a sum of EUR 400,000 available, to which was added finance of EUR200,000 from the local bank, and a sum of EUR100,000 from the state completes the finance (in this contect the “State” being an administrative region of Germany. The final part of the finance package was the slowest to realise, one year or more into the scheme the payment of the EUR100,000 is due to be made in the near future.
As a pilot and demonstration scheme, it has been possible to have some equipment like the experimental cars at a reduced cost – the scheme provides a testing ground for the design for the manufacturer and showcases the product.
In return , the city gains the service of a fleet of three pool cars for use on municipal business. In addition the city gains this service free of the fuel costs associated with conventional petrol or diesel cars. The city gains a service for the inhabitants of cars which are available for hire if not being used on municipal business – the rate of EUR11.44 per day is significantly less than hire of a conventional car, and again the user does not incur fuel costs unless they top up the battery at home. Hirers are oten advised to drive past the petrol station and look t the prices and to note that for their journey the prices on the forecourt are meaningless.
The scheme benefits from the Feed-In Tariff system. In addition to the tariff per unit generated the system will receive a generous payment for each unit it consumes within itself. These units are considered especially valuable since they replace the us of a fossil or nuclear fuel for that same purpose without placing on the grid the problem of coping with unpredictable surpluses of energy which can become increasingly difficult to absorb safely as connected renewable generation continues to increase across the whole country. This income proves useful for the purpose of meeting repayments and interest on the bank loan..
The mayor explained that one way the system gained the necessary support was that it could be presented as a practical project which would benefit the city rather than one tied to one particular political or philosophical viewpoint. With the electric cars available it was possible to allow people to discover some of the advantages for themselves.
Claire Chapman - Scottish Water
Today we were the guests of Herr Rossel, the mayor of Zella-Mehlis. He played an integral part in a local renewable company start-up, called LSIM (Local Solar Innovative Mobile). The city converted an old hospital, with a €500 000 investment, to set up a smart grid concept. This initial investment got them 140 kW of photovoltaics (PV), a 64 kW set of batteries and 2 electric smart cars. The roofs of the buildings are covered in PV, which are used to charge the batteries. These are then used to charge the electric cars, which are then available for the community to rent out at €11.99/day (this compares favourably with normal car rental of €25/day; plus of course the huge saving of no fuel). The mayor’s concept is to educate the townsfolk, and so hopefully they will embrace the ideas.
This afternoon we were tourists, and our hosts were keen to show us why normal folk come to this part of Germany (apparently not many tourists come to see boilers and electric hook-ups…). We drove up from the valley of Zella-Mehlis to the plateau and visited the ski town of Oberhof. This is winter sport country (although it was gloriously sunny today) and we saw several absolutely enormous ski jumps; truly terrifying. I had no idea they would be so big. There was also a very fancy looking luge run, winter biathlon arena and many cross-country / langlaufski tracks. Some of us did a hike along one of the historic luge routes, and I’m amazed more folk didn’t kill themselves on the route – very steep, so many pine trees waiting to hit them, and sharp corners…
Tonight we are going big on local culture, and going to a guitar concert- I’m keeping an open mind!
