Change to renewable energy

Abbot and Energy Council move forward in the year 2000

Due to the uncertain situation in regard to fossil fuels, the high price and pollution the monks of the Abbey of Muensterschwarzach, Bavaria, Germany have decided to get away from oil as much as possible and to use renewable sources like sun, wind, water, wood and methane gas to supply the large abbey grounds, buildings, workshops and school with heat and hot water. For the last five years or so the various projects have been started and all are now working and working well.

The five components of the energy project

Except for a share in a windpark in the North of Germany the four remaining projects are all on abbey grounds. The brook Schwarzach, which was diverted of old, is driving a hydro-electric turbine in the electricity plant.

The old barn is sporting a photovoltaic energy source. The bulls do not mind if on the roof of their stable the monks are collecting the rays of the sun in oder to generate elecricity for the community.

Another plant burns wood from a nearby forest in the Steigerwald. We buy wood that cannot be used otherwise and needs to be cleaned out anyway by those who own the forest. It is delivered here by truck and mulched, I guess you would say. The woodchips are blown into a hangar type building. From there a crawling, forward pushing system in German called “Schubboden” brings the wooden chips to the fire hole. The heat and warm water created serve the whole abbey grounds in winter. According to law the ashes need to be disposed of by a factory, since trees can absorb heavy metals in the growing process.

And the latest project, our biogas plant uses the manure from the bulls, silage, substrat and low grade grain (Schrot) to produce methane gas in a fermentation tower. That is an interesting process. The above four materials are mixed underground, pumped into the fermentation tower, heated to 38C and stirred and mixed by a computer driven mixer so that the cultures in the mix can better produce methane.

The gas is then pumped into a plant where a gas turbine drives a generator to produce electricity which is fed into the main system. Here is interesting that the Government pays a guaranteed price for the kw we produce. At the moment the plant after about 10 – 12 weeks of running time is producing the 190kw maximum output.

The Government helps by paying a guaranteed price for electricty from renewable sources

So in the end we feed electricity from wind, water, photovoltaic and the biogas plant into the grid system.

Switch to renewable energy resources within five years

After an initial push by the Abbot and his energy council the community went along with the proposal for reducing oil in favor of natural resources. This has given us a great advantage in the present day situation. And if things get worse yet in regard to price or availability of oil we have made our choice wisely and early on.