During the visit to Energiewende Apfeldorf, Mr. Gerhard Schmid, the Mayor of Apfeldorf presented the operation of Energiewende Apfeldorf and the village developping project Village center with Future at the Visitor Center.

Energiewende Apfeldorf, Apfeldorf (GE): This event, hosted by the municipality of Apfeldorf (established from 2020 and directly owned by the local government of Fuchstal and the citizens), aims to point out the realization of the local energy transition and the partzipationn of citizens. The focus includes building and operating a solar park and a smart local heat supply using a combination of enpower and heat storage.

Smart Grid Components:

Solar power plant: We visited the solar power plant  with an installed capacity of 14 MWp, supported by 25.926 solar modules from Canadian Solar and a Huawei Sun2000-330 KTL -H1 invertor. The actual total energy generation is 15.500 kWh/a. The total investment  of aprox. 15.5 Mio is 22% equity financed with funding from the community, the land owners and the local citizens which founded together the company Sonnenenergie Apfeldorf GmbH  Co. KG. The actual power demand of Apfeldorf  is 5 Mio kWh, meaning that the solar park genrates  3 times the consumption of Apfeldorf ( 1500 inhabitants).

Large volume Energy storage : The mayor of Apfeldorf reported its ongoing plans to invest into a storage capacity of 11 MWp and a capacity of 222 MWh connected to the grid of the regional utility. The target is to integrate the storage facility into the existing virtual power plant.

Kuhl energy Apfeldorf: The mayor of Apfeldorf presented the ongoing project of the development of a village heat supply from a mix of renewable energy sources with innovative use of an existing milk cooling system. he previously conventionally operated milk cooling system is to be converted to heat pump operation. To provide this heat pump with the best possible emission-free supply, electricity from locally generated solar energy is used. The waste heat from milk cooling is to be used to supply the base load of a heating network.

The planned heating network will be supplied via a newly built heating center.

 The full report is available here.