Municipal utility plugs in 11-MW solar thermal plant in northeast Germany

German municipal utility Stadtwerke Greifswald has put into operation an 11-MW solar thermal plant in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on the Baltic Sea coast that will help decarbonise the local district heating network.

The plant was built by developer Ritter XL Solar on an area of about 18,700 sq m and will feed nearly 8 GWh annually into the district heating system of the city of Greifswald, the utility said on Thursday.

The facility is part of a project for an innovative combined heat and power (CHP) generation system. The system includes also an electrode boiler for converting surplus green electricity into heat, a cogeneration unit and a heat storage facility, which will complement the existing heat storage system and enable the integration of renewable heat generators.

In the second phase of the project, a large-scale air source heat pump will be combined with a CHP system. Through the use of bio natural gas, the share of carbon-neutral district heating in Greifswald is expected to gradually increase over the next few years to a total of over 21%.

The new system shows how solar energy can help make the heat supply in Germany more environmentally friendly and more independent, the utility noted.

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