How building is revolutionized
dated 09/27/2018 - 28:49 min.
www.zdf.de/gesellschaft/plan-b/plan-b-das-haus-von-morgen-100.html
(unfortunately no longer online; 15.2.2021)
Here is another text description:
www.youtv.de/tv-sendungen/3290827-plan-b-das-haus-von-morgen
Now that almost all of the 570 apartments in Germany's largest timber housing estate in Prinz-Eugen-Park have been occupied, the Munich planning committee has recommended the implementation of the follow-up timber construction project "Kreativquartier" with 370 units.
Here are the key data:
http://sdg21.eu/db/kreativquartier
Keywords:
DE-News, Wood construction, Communities, News Blog Bavaria, Mix of uses, Quarters
In 2018, Deutsche Bahn fed 57 percent green electricity into the grid. This is an increase of 13 percent in electricity from renewable energies compared to the previous year. DB is thus already the largest consumer of green electricity in Germany.
More info:
www.deutschebahn.com/...medienpaket_klimaschutzziel-1201550
Keywords:
Stakeholders, DE-News, Renewable, Climate protection, Mobility, eMobility, Life cycle assessment, Ecology
Berlin, 22 October 2018: Vattenfall Energy Solutions, Gewobag and the energy storage start-up Lumenion are jointly piloting a new type of sector-coupled steel storage system at Bottroper Weg in Berlin-Tegel, which absorbs regional generation peaks from wind and solar energy in a grid-serving manner and later provides the renewable energy as heat and electricity in line with demand.
"With this pilot project, we want to demonstrate the particular technical and economic suitability of thermal storage systems for the effective utilisation of large quantities of wind and solar energy in a very practical way," says Alexander Voigt, founder and Managing Director of Lumenion. "Some of our team have been working with renewable energies for over 30 years and with energy storage systems for over ten years. Based on this experience, we made a conscious decision in favour of steel as a storage medium for the second phase of the energy transition, which is just beginning."
The Lumenion steel storage system stores "electricity peaks" for less than 2 cent/KWh in a cost- and space-efficient manner at up to 650° Celsius as heat, which can be converted back into electricity using a turbine unit if required - or used entirely as heat. As a co-founder of Solon, Q-Cells and Younicos, among others, Voigt has been successfully launching solar modules and storage systems on the market since the 1990s.
Hanno Balzer, Managing Director of Vattenfall Energy Solutions GmbH: "Decentralised systems and energy storage are key factors in the energy transition; heat is a particularly cost-effective form of storage. If the stored energy can then be utilised not only as heat but also in the form of electricity, that is a milestone. The high-temperature storage system brings us a big step closer to this!"
Karsten Mitzinger from Gewobag Energie- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft adds: "The energy transition can only succeed if it is decentralised and based on partnership. As a housing industry, we are making our contribution to climate protection in our neighbourhoods. With this project, we are pleased to be able to demonstrate the good cooperation between energy supply companies, municipal housing associations and innovative start-ups. Only together can we master the major challenges of the energy transition."
In the Tegler pilot project, a 2.4 megawatt hour (MWh) storage block is being trialled for commercial use and transferred to regular operation. To this end, the unit will be integrated with an existing gas-powered CHP unit from Vattenfall Energy Solutions into the neighbourhood electricity and local heating supply of a 1970s apartment building owned by Gewobag. The storage system will temporarily absorb any power peaks that are not required and feed them into the heat supply later on as needed. In a second step, a reconversion into electricity is also planned.
Parallel to the construction of the pilot project, Lumenion is testing a 450 kWh prototype on the campus of the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in Oberschöneweide. The HTW is supporting Lumenion with practical accompanying research in the development, testing and validation of data, as well as in the regulation and operational management of the innovative storage system.
In further projects, Lumenion storage systems with 40 MWh and even 1,400 MWh are to be created as the next milestones. These giga-storages can integrate existing and newly added large quantities of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar power into the existing grids in a particularly favourable, efficient and demand-oriented manner, thus enabling a significant acceleration of the energy transition.
Keywords:
DE-News, Energy storage, Renewable, Climate protection, News Blog Berlin, PlusEnergy house/settlement, Quarters, Electricity storage
Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser presents this year's NRW Forest Condition Report: "Our forests are in a worrying condition. This is because the combined effect of storms in the spring, followed by extreme summer drought and then heavy bark beetle infestation in the coniferous forests means that the damage this year is considerable."
Thus, 39 percent of the trees surveyed show clear crown thinning and another 39 percent show weak crown thinning, i.e. leaf loss. This leaves only 22 percent without crown defoliation. Since the field surveys on crown condition had to be completed in August for methodological reasons and the evaluations on the full extent of bark beetle damage are still ongoing, the actual forest damage is likely to be even greater.
2018: First storm, then drought, finally bark beetle
North Rhine-Westphalia was particularly hard hit by Hurricane Friederike in January. 2.5 million solid cubic metres of "storm wood" were produced. The months of April to August were the warmest and sunniest and at the same time the months with the least precipitation since the German Meteorological Service began keeping records in 1881. The bark beetle species "spruce bark beetle" and "copper bark beetle" proliferated in the spruce forests due to the wood that had accumulated as a result of the storm and the summer drought, which severely weakened the trees' defences. Spruce forests cover about one third of the forest area in North Rhine-Westphalia. The current state of the surveys suggests that this is the largest bark beetle calamity in several decades.
Task Force "Bark Beetle
In order to cope with the current difficult situation for the North Rhine-Westphalian forestry sector, Minister Heinen-Esser recently set up a "bark beetle" task force. This task force will primarily work to ensure that the damaged wood is removed from the forest as quickly as possible and that a further mass reproduction of bark beetles next year can be contained as far as possible.
Requirements due to climate change
Minister Heinen-Esser: "In addition to the acute measures, however, it is also important for the state government to develop forests that are more stable and resistant to climate change in the longer term. To this end, the new silviculture concept for North Rhine-Westphalia and other supporting instruments for forest owners will be presented shortly. Important information for forest management will soon be offered in a modern and user-friendly way via the new internet portal 'Waldinfo.NRW'."
Background to the State of the Forest Report:
The vitality of forest trees is recorded annually according to a uniform nationwide method. For this purpose, the condition of the tree crowns of about 10,000 trees is assessed by forestry experts for North Rhine-Westphalia and other factors are also taken into account. The forest condition has deteriorated since the beginning of the survey in 1984. Since about 2000, the damage measure has remained at a roughly constant high level with annual fluctuations. The annual forest condition report also includes supplementary technical information that is not represented by the method in the narrower sense (z. B. this year statements on amounts of damaged wood).
The new instruments for forest management in climate change are part of the climate adaptation strategy for forests and forest management in North Rhine-Westphalia. Important implementation projects are the new silviculture concept NRW, the state-wide forest location map and the new forest information system NRW (here especially the new internet portal Waldinfo.NRW). Also relevant here are the forest-relevant specialist information systems on climate change.
State of the Forest Report 2018
Source: from 21.11.18
Keywords:
DE-News, Wood construction, Sustainable management, News Blog NRW, Ecology, Economics
