Brief
In September 2025, the village of Bracht in Hesse commissioned what its lead researcher calls an unprecedented system: an existing village supplied almost entirely by renewable heat, with solar thermal as the dominant source rather than a supplement. Around 193 households are now connected via a network built by a locally founded energy cooperative, with scientific support from the University of Kassel’s ruralHeat programme and funding from the State of Hesse.
The municipality is also planning to sell 20 land plots to families for building houses and these 20 houses will automatically be connected to the grid, as it is mandatory for the buyers to do so.
Technology
The plant pairs 11,600 m² of flat-plate solar collectors with a 26,600 m³ underground water storage tank, buffering seasonal solar surplus for winter use. A 700 kWth wood boiler and two heat pumps (1,200 kWth combined) cover the remaining demand. Solar thermal supplies around 70% of total heat output — well above the 20–40% typical of conventional networks — cutting the village’s heating emissions by roughly 98%. Construction leaned heavily on volunteer labour, including retired residents and university students who helped build the storage tank as part of their studies.
Financial Structure
The project was funded through a combination of state, EU and Hessian sources, reaching a cumulative funding rate of around 60%, made possible under the former “Wärmenetze 4.0” scheme, which allowed funding to be stacked across multiple programmes. A similar project is already underway 20 km away in Rüdigheim, feeding into ruralHeat’s wider evaluation across ten planned case studies aimed at replicating Bracht’s model elsewhere.
