German Town Will Soon Use 100% Renewable Power

There’s a small town in Germany called Dardesheim, that relies almost entirely on renewable sources for its energy needs. The town’s goal is to use 100% renewable power, and become known as German’s “Town of Renewable Energies”. Dardesheim already has some huge wind turbines in place, and many solar roofs installed. Last year they installed an amazing 62 megawatts of wind power, including one 6 megawatt turbine, the E112.


Paul Gipe writes in Wind Works:

The E112 alone is expected to produce from 12 to 15 million kWh per year, enough to meet the electrical needs of 4,000 households in this region of Germany. Altogether, the wind turbines will generate from 120 to 130 million kWh annually, enough to meet the needs of nearly all the 80,000 residents of the county. And if the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow they don’t need a large battery storage they fire up a biomass plant to generate the electricity from plant residues, wood pellets and manure.

This isn’t the first that the villages have been exposed to renewable energy. Four pioneering wind turbines were installed in the mid-1990s, collectively producing one million kWh per year. The more extensive project has been in the works since then.

They also installed nine different solar PV plants: five private projects totaling 170 kW, and four projects at the Druiberg wind plant totaling 210 kW. During their first year of operation the combined 380 kW of solar PV generated nearly 250,000 kWh, about one-third of the Dardesheim’s domestic electricity consumption.

The town of Dardesheim also wants to attract tourists who are interested in renewable energy. They’ve built a renewable energy information center (on a former anti-ballistic missile radar station), and this year they also expect to install a large wind turbine fitted out with a observation platform.

For more information on Dardesheim, see this Wind Works article.

17 thoughts on “German Town Will Soon Use 100% Renewable Power”

  1. Google, torrent, the documentary, `Who Stole the Electric car`. Study this well! Corporate power, a world-wide, environmentally negative, self-interested, inhuman, phenomenon! Where did the EV-1`s fantastic, easy to build domestically, lithium import-free, re-chargeable, proven adequate, batteries, go. The big corps, Exxon, Mobil, and the patent lawyer-gangsters got them! FuÉck!
    These batteries, the very best, cheapest to buy, most cheaply produced, mega- rechargeable, best ballasts for Wind Power ever, and totally recyclable, lost to corporatist interests! Also found exceptionally serviceable in the RAV-4 EL by Toyota – proven serviceable here, economically realistic, also `Disappeared` by the evil corporate interests! The Bastards: They put profitability ahead of the environment one more time! Not even given a chance to `Vote with our wallets`, Shiite! Bull-Shiite! Germans need to work around this `Corporate` problem too! China simply ignores U.S. money-pumping, anti-environmental, inhumane, patent law, proprietary secret scams, and has cabs in Shanghai using these same batteries successfully for at least five years now. S. Korea produces a variation of them for sale on the open market, imported for the `All American` Chev Volt!
    Canadians have Straw-Bale, super-insulated houses up and saving fuel as we speak! – 40 degree C Canadian, 6 month winters, and folks burn only 1 and a half cords of hard-wood all, long, Canadian, winter. Documented in articles on this same web! Most use Solar advantage where possible, all are cozy-warm in winter, very cool, naturally, in summer. Canada also uses `Stack-Wood` super-insulating structures. Germany! Take note! Super-insulation!
    Question: Will China`s newer Thorium fueled, fail-safe, plutonium – free, waste product- benign after only 300 year dangerous life-span , economically designed, capitalist influence -free, planned obsolescence engineering-free, proprietary secret free, Uranium Cartel influence – free, American corporate cronyism-free, nuclear reactors: Power their nuclear electric bullet train networks with associated nuclear electric powered infrastructures, as China daisy-chains electric bullet train s and associated infrastructures, from Europe`s eastern borders, up to Siberia, and to China`s seas, right in front of an America stuck on stupid, married to Middle Eastern parasite countries, OPEC oil, and bogged down in anal legal and political commitments in the Middle East.
    Germany, You are on the right path! Oil up again today on world markets, driven by stronger Asian bids in Yuan against U.S.dollars for a bigger share in a finite world resource, Americans crying at the pumps all over America, fearing $5.00+ a gallon gasoline, declining dollar, wages falling, disastrous inflation muffled by corporate press, exposed on internet comments, price-lists only!
    Caution Germans! Avoid at all costs! The romantic, unreal, American Dream! It is a preposterous exaggeration, a stretching of reality, It is designed by the Corporate propagandists! It is used to `hook` gullible, poorly educated,(39th in world by Obama`s own shameful admission!) greedy, unwitting, totally propagandized, Americans to the corporate money-lender`s schemes!
    Because American dollar is currency of world trade, U.S. corporate money lenders, business folk, need only `churn` U.S. dollars to `skim` a percentage off the top of any deal; car-sales, house-sales, appliance sales, computer system, Flat-screen TV, boat+motor, swimming pool, vacation, clothing, even food on credit card sales, to generate personal, on paper, skim gains – not even real wealth for their own country, then through devaluation of the U.S. dollar by the Fed`s money-printing machine, pass this expense out to the international folks, even poorest folks of the whole world, no labor, no resources, no productivity, no effort, no building, no real wealth, involved! The Bastards!
    China soon to change this, Yuan soon to become currency of world commerce. Run on world Gold, silver, prices already evidence of this. Euro will be included in `basket` with Yuan, Yuan far out-weighing all other currencies in basket, however. Canadian Dollar only secure currency in world at the moment. American Dream dieing even for Americans, foreclosed McMansions, repossessed cars, trucks,higher unemployment, smaller banks gone broke in America and China refuses loans to Obama`s Secretary Steven Geithner – while America becomes world`s largest Debtor Nation of all times, and devalues its U.S. dollar by furiously over- printing it without real-wealth backing!
    Time now for all nations to get energy independent, self-sustaining, sustainable, Germany is on the right path.
    Self-sufficient, sustainable, energy-independent, countries like Germany, Denmark, will suffer less in the Super-Depression on the horizons, the one that will be caused by astounding, unrealistic, unbacked, spending, on poorly based, over-extended, credit, by Americans even on expensive, imported, foreign oil they cannot afford, and the constant urgings of the `American Dream` propaganda tools.
    China`s solution: Switch, ahead of the crash, to Thorium fueled nuclear power as well as Solar, Wave, Wind, Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, Bio-mass, domestic, perpetual or renewable electricity sources to off-set scarcity of oil, to diversify energy sources. Develop huge rail (400% more energy efficient) services. feed their people healthy diets, including huge portions of veggies, less meats more home-grown fish. Reduce oil use in food production.
    America`s solution: Drill Baby Drill! But: Even if the wildest estimates for potential oil were found, world-wide, as a matter of scale, proportioning American use to potential American discoveries, only decades of oil can be developed this way, and ending then! Americans are simply fooling themselves! Americans not preparing for days of efficient rail travel, in fact, expanding expensive, oil intensive flying! What do they know that we do not know! Americans eat like pigs! We all see the heavy advertisements for meat consumption! We all see the recipes on the web! We all see the very fat rumped Americans in photos of American streets! All American meat is totally foreign oil dependent! goddammit! What are they thinking!

  2. By carefully tailoring lifestyle to availability to provide power, by Solar, Wind, Wave, Tidal, Hydro and geo-thermal systems, we can all survive in a much cleaner world. Include communal bio-gassing of sewage, and offal, and careful recycling and disposal of garbage we end up in an almost disease free, low cost per capita, world. Going deeper into the Socialist aspects of this new technology, we can collectively invest in Wind Turbine and Solar installations, super-insulated, passive solar oriented, heated/cooled homes of reasonable dimension, and do even better at the survival game! Such is not the interest of the corporate living, capitalistic, “American Dream”, folks, They insist that by taking clever, or even dishonest advantage of the environment and their fellow man they can excel and live “Higher on the Hog” than others and get away with this all the time! Sadly many other Americans suffer tremendously and needlessly due to this sick, Unchristian, anti-social, anti socialist, unjewish, selfish and anti-environmental attitude! When they change, the world will shift, and a fairer share might be available to all! For now we suffer their huge weight on our backs, and hope lies in the progress made in Germany! The Good News! The Chinese now own the greedy Americans, lock, stock, and barrel, and have recently refused to finance them with trillion dollar loans, and are by trade, driving the American Dollar into the ground! a lesson is being taught here! a social one if not a socialist one, and economically, not by death and destruction! Formidable and very intelligent “Mother China” is taking care of her chicks, even the bad teenage girl America! and she is growing up because of this! More power to brother Germany, may the “Force” be kind to you always!

  3. Manfred Millmann

    100 % Erneuerbare scheinen mir angesichts der gegebenen Möglichkeiten nicht gerade ambitioniert. Rechnet man die Windkraft und Stirling-Technik dazu, kommt man leicht auf über 500 % Stromerzeugung über den eigenen Bedarf hinaus

  4. Catalin Hustea

    It is Marvelous. What they are doing makes me very happy and optimistic that one day I too will be able to install solar pannels on my house and a wind turbine in my backyard. We do little we can by using efficient lightbulbs(they have a short lifespan and are expensive)and we are a poor country. But hope is glowing.
    Keep on the environmental frendly activity and good luck.
    Catalin Hustea

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