Brief
A brand-new solar district heating project is underway in the city of Bad Rappenau, home to 22,356 people, in the south of Germany. The solar thermal plant is expected to start operating in 2024 and replace the use of wood and biogas in the generation of heat for Bad Rappenau’s district heating network.
Technology
The flat plate collectors installed in an area spanning 29,000 m² are an efficient technology to provide renewable heat sourced from the sun to households in Bad Rappenau, covering their entire hot water demand during the summer. In addition to feeding into the city’s district heating network, the solar thermal plant will also supply industrial process heat. During the summer, when the solar yields are particularly high, but the heat needs of the district heating network are lower than in the winter, the solar thermal plant will provide 3MWh of heat to facilitate the drying of animal feed at the factory owned by the investor, Bauer Biomasse. Even at night the drying plant can produce animal feed thanks to solar thermal energy since the overproduction of solar energy of the day is stored in an 8,000m³ tank and saved for later use.
Financial Structure
This project was funded thanks to an investment by Bauer Biomasse, a waste management service operating also a biomass heating plant in Bad Rappenau, Germany. The company’s motivation as stated by Markus Bauer, the company’s boss, is that wood and biogas in particular are too valuable to be used for generating district heat when solar energy can fulfil that purpose.