ENERGY PROJECT IN AACHEN
[BIZ: Aachen, October 9] There was a great deal of interest for the solar plant in Aachen. The project cost EUR 21.7m and is a cooperative project of the Solar Institute, the city power company of Jülich and research partners. EUR 11.6m is provided by federal government and both North-Rhine Westphalia and Bavaria. The 1.5MW performance will come on line in the form of the solar power plant in 2008. It actually runs like a normal power plant but is fired by the sun. A field of 20,000m2 of mirrors concentrates the solar radiation on a specially developed receiver, a 60m high tower, and this raises the temperature to 1,000 degrees, which gets things working. The Energy Council brought people up to date, and there is an advice center on the Boxgraben. Since the opening of the center in May 2004, there have been 8,000 contacts and a quarter of these come from the Aachen district. In this area alone EUR 35m in concrete saving measures have been invested. This means that there is potential total investment of EUR 200m with 40,000 tons of CO2 offsets. This is for trades and business - old buildings can’t be sufficiently assessed. Questions on economic programs, improvement of windows, retaining heat, renewable heat, sustainable energies are all on the menu. The increase in political and economic activity means that the Energy Council will play a bigger role in the future.
Aachen’s energy council, at the invitation of the Jülich Solar Institute’s Professor Klemens Schwarzer, is to look at the solar institute and technical solutions in the area of sustainable and efficient use of energy.
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