In early June, my Athens roomies and I traveled (by car and ferry boat) from Athens to Kassel, Germany. In Kassel, we met up with around 30 students – mostly renewable energy classmates from Oldenburg but also a few students from other disciplines or who studied RE elsewhere. We then set out on a 12-day journey through central and southeastern* Germany.
* Note: According to all Germans I’ve discussed this topic with, it’s utterly incorrect to use the word “east” (including NE or SE) in a description of German locations, unless they were in the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik a.k.a. East Germany) before reunification. When a place is geographically near the eastern border of a Germany (e.g. München/Munich), however, I don’t know any other way to appropriately describe its whereabouts than by using the word southeast.
Day 1 – June 2
- SMA (Kassel) – We visited SMA, which is one of the (if not “the”) world’s leading solar/wind inverter manufacturers. My former employers, Abundant Renewable Energy, used exclusively SMA inverters for grid-connected wind turbine applications. I was already familiar with SMA’s products, and our presentation didn’t delve into much technical info (and provided absolutely no information on wind energy applications)… so although I’m a fan of this company and their products, their presentation to us was a bit lackluster, in my opinion. We were not permitted to take photos at their facility, so this day is, unfortunately, a bit faceless.
Day 2
- Geoforschungszentrum – CO2 Sequestration (Pottsdam) – This was a completely new idea for me. Basically, there are large fissures in the rocks deep beneath the earth’s surface near Pottsdam, which have been used for many years to store natural gas. There are now experiments to determine the viability of permanently “sequestering” large quantities of carbon dioxide in these cavern-like formations, in order to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases which are released to the atmosphere. It’s definitely a controversial topic, and many in our group of students and administrators left this visit with the impression that this was a waste of money and resources… but I’m of the opinion that any possible remedies (or partial remedies) to our environmental problems should be investigated, if there are organizations and/or individuals willing to fund such research.
www.gfz-potsdam.de
Checking out the C02 sequestration borehole
- Domestic Water Recycling Controversey (Briesensee) – In this small village, a woman named Doris Groger had an electric pump that provided her house with water from a nearby aquifer. She also commissioned a local engineer to design a domestic “water recycling” or wastewater treatment plant for her to dispose of her water. The engineered solution included several settling chambers for waste water, followed by a process in which the resulting water was utilized for watering plants automatically. Mrs. Groger was proud of her system for what it accomplished (technically)… but also because it kept her independent from the new sewage treatment plant that had recently been built in a neighboring village. She saw the sewage treatment plant as a means of squashing individual rights to live independently. Many of her Briesensee neighbors had similar systems, but they succumbed to pressure threats from authorities and linked up with the sewage treatment plant. Mrs. Groger refused. Then apparently in mid-September, the police arrested Mrs. Groger, so that the local water/sewage authorities could build the required connection point to her house.
Was it a matter of individual liberty versus authoritarian power? Or were there other factors at play? We only received Mrs. Groger’s side of the story… so I don’t know how to fairly assess the situation.
1. www.lr-online.de/regionen/Abwasser-Streit-in-Briesensee-Briesensee-Abwasser-Doris-Groger;art77931,2167021 (Article on Briesensee controversy, in German)
2. www.paul-aus-petershagen.de/aktuelles/080907_briesensee.html (Article on Briesensee controversy, in German)
Tour of Mrs. Groger’s water treatment facility
Mrs. Groger’s interesting yard art collection says, “Stay away!“ at so many levels…
Day 3
- Deutsche Solar AG (Freiberg) – We spent around half of this day visiting a solar photovoltaic panel manufacturing and recycling facility. No photos were permitted in this manufacturing facility either.
www.deutschesolar.de - Solar PV Park (near Freiberg) – At the time, we figured out roughly how much PV capacity was amassed in this solar park… but gosh, it’s been too many months, so I’m not gonna hazard a guess right now (… but there were LOTS).
Large-scale solar PV installation near Freiberg
Day 4- Vattenfall (Markersbach) – Vattenfall is one of Northern Europe’s largest power producers. They produce their energy using a combination of wind, biomass, coal, nuclear, and large hydro power. We visited their large hydro power production and storage facility located near Markersbach. We received a very thorough tour of the storage reservoir and pumping facilities by a very lively engineer/manager. Unfortunately, my German wasn’t good enough at the time to understand what he was so animatedly saying, but it was obvious that he felt passionately about his job and wanted to give us as much information as possible.
www.vattenfall.com
BAAAAAAAHHH!!! We encountered this friendly guy on our trek through the meadow toward the Vattenfall hydro storage reservoir
Climbing the stairs to the reservoir viewing area
Vattenfall-Markersbach hydro power storage reservoir
Vista from the reservoir lookout deck
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François has his way with a dandelion at reservoir’s edge…
Day 5
- Dehn & Söhne (Neumarkt) – Dehn is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of lightning protection devices. Their equipment has a reputation of being high in price but equally high in quality. In addition to showing us a sale-oriented presentation on their lightning surge protectors, we were permitted to view an artificially generated lightning strike in a laboratory. They showed us how their equipment holds up when it is properly installed, grounded, etc. Then, in three subsequent tests, they showed us how improper installation can render lightning protection equipment useless. It was interesting (and, I’ll admit, kinda fun to watch stuff get speed-cooked before your eyes!). Once again, no photos were allowed in the facilities.
www.dehn.de
Days 6-8
- Freetime in München [Munich] – On Friday night when we arrived, we were led on a walking tour through the city center by two German student in our group. Then we had the weekend to spend as we pleased. The German football [soccer] team was competing in the European Cup games, so there was a match on two of the three nights that most of my classmates were eager to see. On Sunday afternoon, a small group of us went to a classical piano concert held at the Nymphenburg Palace in the outskirts of town. On Monday, the full group visited the famous Deutsches Museum, where we received a private tour by a curator who had put together an exhibit on renewable energy. The curator spoke to us about techniques for creating museum exhibit, using his RE exhibit and an older exhibit on the evolution of the windmill as examples.
www.muenchen.de/home/60093/Homepage.html (City of Munich tourism website)
www.deutsches-museum.de (Deutches Museum site)
View from Peterskirche [St. Peter’s Church] in city center
Checking out the Marienplatz market en masse
The whole excursion crew at a beer hall somewhere in Munich
Nymphenburg Palace before concert (Solène, Craig, & François in center foreground)
Daniel, Ritah, & I learning about the “carbon footprint” of various daily human activities at the Deutsches Museum (photo by U.Parinyacupt)
Windmills exhibit at Deutsches Museum (photo by U.Parinyacupt)
Days 9-11
- Weilheimer Hütte (Bavarian Alps) – This was the much-anticipated climax of our 12-day excursion. Weilheimer Hütte is a mountain hut at 1955m (6415 ft.), which is powered almost entirely by renewable energy resources – micro-hydro, wind, and solar energy (a diesel generator provides back-up). It’s a very cozy – albeit without frills (e.g. no hot water) – hut, and Christian (manager) and his wife cook fantastic meals for guests.
We first took a ski lift up about 1000m and then hiked up the remaining distance to the hut. The members of our group possessed a broad range of hiking experience/skills – from “never been on a mountain before” to avid hikers. My mountaineering skills were somewhere in the middle of the pack, so I got a little winded occasionally… but some others suffered quite a bit from the climb. Thankfully everyone arrived at the top safely. There was a day hike and a tour of the hut’s renewable energy systems on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, we returned down the mountain using the same route we’d ascended two days earlier. Not surprisingly, the downward trek was quicker and easier than the upward climb… and everyone seemed energized at the bottom.
www.alpenverein.at/huettenHome/EN/Home/index.php?huetteNr=0747 (Weilheimer Hütte)
Getting a lift part-way up the mountain
Garmisch-Partenkirchen from above
Big horns
Real purdy mountain view
Weilheimer Hütte from a nearby peak
Sunset from the hut
Mountain rainbow
Weilheimer Hütte’s mini (1kW) wind turbine (photo by U.Parinyacupt)
More nice mountain views
Starting the return hike down the mountain – foggy and a little misty
Cute li’l feller along the path
No passage! (What’s the secret password?)
I’m sure this guy was at least as scared of us as we were of him, but we pretty nervous about passing him
- Unterhaching Geothermal Plant (Unterhaching, Bavaria) – After coming down the mountain and gobbling up a big, down-home, country brunch at a local restaurant that our fearless leader, Hans, used to go with his parents in his youth, we drove to Germany’s largest geothermal power plant in Unterhaching, near Munich.
Geothermal heating plants make use of water which has been heated by hot stuff (that’s the technical term) down deep in the earth. Sometimes geothermal plants use the actual hot water from below, but at Unterhaching, they use heat exchangers and a “closed-loop” system, consisting of a water/ammonia solution (known in the industry as the “Kalina system”) , in order to maximize heat-transfer benefits.
After the ammonia solution is heated – at around 3350m (11,000 ft) below the earth’s surface – this heat is transferred via heat exchangers to stored fresh water, which is piped to houses in the surrounding area to supply municipal hot water requirements. The remaining heat energy is used to create steam, which powers turbines to produce electricity.
www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/co ntent/jun2008/gb2008063_168366.htm (article from Business Week / Spiegel Online)
Pumps and ducts at the Unterhaching geothermal plant
