Green Tech Magazine December 2018 en

GREEN TECH MAGAZINE
December 2018
Cover photo: istockphoto.com, shutterstock.com
Local energy
communities
Micro-grids for power
and heat on the rise
Flexibility for future
heat supply
EU environmental ministers
visit the Green Tech Valley

2 CONTENTS
GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 3
DEAR READERS!
Power and heating networks of
the future require a new level of
flexibility to integrate sources of
renewable energy. This is why Styrian
research facilities and companies
are working on solutions such
as micro-grids to stabilise grids.
This development also sees Local
Energy Communities on the rise.
The Thermaflex model project uses
seven demonstration projects to
showcase the future of renewable
heating grids. Environmental technology
companies and green tech
start-ups from Styria entered the
limelight across the EU when EU
environmental and transport ministers
visited them in the framework
of their meeting in Graz. The Green
Tech Cluster also entered the limelight
as an official Guinness World
Record Holder – thanks to the
world’s largest mosaic made from
recyclable material.
We hope you will enjoy our new
issue and draw much inspiration
from our reports.
Bernhard Puttinger and the Green
Tech Cluster Styria Team
World news:
Sources of renewable energy
are booming
Page 03
03
Local micro-grids
The future of power and
energy grids
Page 04
Green Talent
Success with
‘forward osmosis’
Page 07
EU Council of Ministers
in Graz
EU visit the Green Tech Valley
Page 10
Partners: FSC and PEFC
07
Legal notice: Media owner and publisher: Green Tech Cluster Styria GmbH, Waagner-Biro-Straße 100, 8020 Graz, Austria,
Tel.: +43 316 40 77 44-0, welcome@greentech.at, www.greentech.at. Content and project management: Andreas
Pompenig, Bernhard Puttinger | Production: Die Steirerin Verlags GmbH & Co KG, Schubertstraße 29/1, 8010 Graz,
Tel.: +43 316 84 12 12-0, www.diesteirerin.at | Print: Offsetdruck Bernd DORRONG e.U., www.dorrong.at
04
10
Latest
highlights
Plug & play Innovation Box
Innovation made
faster & more efficient
Page 11
Thermaflex model project
How to optimise district
heating grids
Page 14
11
14
Photo credits: fluvicon, Shutterstock, Green Tech Cluster, Salzburg AG
Photo credits: The Ocean Cleanup, Shutterstock
World News
Sources of renewable energy are booming
A market analysis conducted by the International Energy Agency IEA
for the time of 2018 to 2023 yields satisfying numbers for sources of
renewable energy. Bioenergy will account for 30 % of the growth of
renewables between 2018 and 2023. Internationally the percentage
of renewables will increase by a fifth to 12.4 % by 2023. In 2023 power
produced by means of renewables will cover 30 % of energy demands,
compared to 24 % in 2017. 70 % of this growth in power production is
attributable to solar power. At 16 % hydropower will remain the largest
source of renewable energy in 2023, followed by wind power at 6 %,
solar power at 4 % and bioenergy at 3 %. In the heating sector the
percentage of renewables will increase by 20 % and will account for
12 % of the world’s heating supply by 2023.
www.iea.org/renewables2018
Cleaning the world’s oceans
Often condescendingly smiled at in the beginning Boyan Slat is tirelessly
implementing his Ocean Cleanup project: Using 600-metre-long
floating barriers he cleans the world’s oceans. A giant float from which
a curtain-like contraption hangs down into the water about three metres
floats through the ocean, filtering plastic waste out of the water.
This, the largest cleaning campaign to date, will first be tested in the
Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. After that the 24-yearold
Dutchman’s team plans to pull the giant waste trap to the Northern
Pacific Gyre where huge amounts of plastic waste have accumulated.
If the test run is successful 60 such systems are planned to follow.
www.theoceancleanup.com
Worldwide final energy consumption of sources of renewable
energy in Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalents)
Total: 926.4
21.7
58.1
84.7
283.5
460.1
18.3
Total growth 250.2
Mtoe (+ 26 %)
2017 2023
Non-funded solar power
For the first time a solar power plant was able to feed power into the
grid without making use of market premiums. Wattner’s Cologne-based
solar power park became the first solar power facility in Germany to do
without remuneration according to the German Renewable Energy Act
(EEG). The reasons for this development lie in rapidly dropping prices
for solar power modules to almost a quarter compared to 2006. Fewer
resources required for every photovoltaic cell and increasing efficiency
add to this. The trend continues. While facilities with outputs between
92 and 97 Gigawatt were installed in 2017 this number will rise to up to
121 Gigawatt by 2019, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
www.photovoltaik.eu
Let’s say goodbye to waste
Total: 1168.5
29.8
52.4
92.3
314.9
Geothermal
Solar Thermal
Solar PV
Wind
Hydropower
Bioenergy
In its latest report titled ‘What a Waste 2.0’ the World Bank expresses
its concern about rapidly growing mountains of waste. Until 2050 the
amounts of waste produced worldwide will increase by 70 per cent. At
the moment, 2.01 billion tonnes of waste accrue annually, increasing to 3.4
billion tonnes by 2050. Investments in recycling and waste management
systems therefore make economic sense. In Europe, Austria is already a
model country in this respect and a real ‘master of sorting’: 97 per cent of its
citizens sort their waste to be turned into valuable raw materials while the
average among the EU’s 27 members is 87 per cent. At 63 % Austria is also
its number one when it comes to its recycling rate. www.worldbank.org
143.1
536

4
Micro-grids
on the rise
The overloading of electricity and energy grids will be one of the challenges
for the near future. Local micro-grids for electricity and heat can provide
support in this matter. Styrian companies offer exciting solutions including
the Local Energy Communities that build on this.
Intelligent, sustainable and energy-saving
solutions in the power and energy
sector are becoming more and more important.
The micro-grid concept represents
a significant approach for the optimum
control of power and energy flows.
So-called smart grids are used regionally
to ‘intelligently’ adapt power production
and consumption using digital communication
and mathematical models.
Originally developed for power grids, micro-grids
are also suitable in the heating
sector for making energy systems more
efficient, sustainable and robust overall.
Local forms of energy production such
as solar power, biomass and biogas are
integrated and more and more network
participants turn into prosumers (producer-consumers).
This not only reduces
a country’s dependency on imports and
increases the local energy systems’ reliability
but also solves many potential problems
(mismatch between production and
consumption) at the local level.
It’s also about balance
The challenge of decoupling the German-Austrian
electricity market shows
this. Germany’s wind power plants in the
north produce the power that is needed
by the large consumers in the south –
which leads to power line overload. “It is
therefore smart to promote local energy
production and intelligent grids. The local
integration of biogas and hydrogen will
also become more important as it’s about
finding a balance,” says Michael Stadler,
Area Manager at the K1 Competence
Center Bioenergy 2020+ and a specialist
for micro-grid technology.
According to him, establishing micro-grids
makes sense for the energy economy as
well as small solar power contributors.
“Energy providers are interested in the latter
not constantly feeding their power into
the overall grid in a volatile way. We will
increasingly see intelligent systems being
combined,” Stadler is convinced.
European companies see regions with vulnerable
or badly developed infrastructure
as future markets. Exporting hard
and software solutions represents a large
growth market for both North America
and Asia.
Energy Communities require better
framework conditions
Styria already has a few prosumer solutions,
at least at the local level. “During
school holidays, excess energy produced
by the solar thermal plant at the Federal
Forestry School in Bruck an der Mur is fed
into the system since it is not needed on
site. The waste heat from domestic paper
mills also goes into thermal heating grids.
The same applies to solar power systems,
which we have implemented as citizen participation
models in various communities.
The aim here is to develop storage solutions
that cover local demand at night and peak
times. “We are in the process of integrating
more and more small providers, but we
have to penetrate the market more deeply
still,” Leo Riebenbauer, Managing Director
at the Office for Renewable Energy, states.
Harald Kaufmann from nahwaerme.at Energy
Contracting is more concerned about
regulatory issues for implementing micro-grid
solutions in a broader manner.
Kaufmann: “We mainly build local biomass
heating networks above a certain size, as
micro-grids are currently difficult to implement
from an economic point of view,
above all due to excessively high implementation
requirements.” And yet, Kaufmann
identifies good application possibilities
for intelligent grids, for instance
regarding the co-supply of adjacent buildings
when a company or large residential
building builds a heating system for itself.
Even better legal framework conditions are
needed for the self-sufficiency of electricity
in a micro-grid.
EU Internal Market in Electricity
Directive as a driver
Increasing e-mobility also leads to more
challenges. “When it comes to power grids,
there is always the necessity of balancing
Photo credits: Montage: hope-design.at
Market-ready
Market significance
Energy economy and national organisation
Orientation of
settlement areas
Smart village / ownership initiatives
low
energy flows between producer and consumer
and to temporarily store energy,”
says Peter Käfer from meo Smart Home Energy.
The Managing Director and his company
develop concepts to link single family
homes and entire settlements in the form
of ‘quarters’ and to thus optimally manage
energy distribution. Meo controls the individual
energy components using a simple
control logic.
The significance shown in the radar chart was weighted according to an assessment based on the status quo and expected
developments from today’s perspective.
Käfer is convinced that “if the EU ratifies
its suggestion on the current Electricity
Market Directive as planned, the current
hierarchical system will be gradually transitioned
to cellular and decentralised energy
communities, so-called Local Energy
Communities.” One such example would
be Smart City Wörgl, where more than
300 flats have been combined to a quarter
and controlled as a micro-grid. Further
topics are citizen participation projects,
for instance regarding solar power plants,
Hardware and plant technology
2023 20 18 2023
medium
high
Grand programmes
for energy storage
systems
Energy
self-sufficiency
Decentralised
energy production
Integration of the
mobility sector
Prosumers
Cooperatives
Direct current grids
Grid stabilising
consumers
Integration of
heating and
cooling networks
Soft sensor
Taking into account
line losses
Load transfer
Crowd-based
Citizen participation
Communal
grid operators
Chemical
conversion
processes
Seasonal
storage
Internal linkage of
systems
Smart metering
DER-CAM
Static
storage
Classic data analysis
Real time
Optimisation
Block chain
technology
Evolutionary
algorithms
Integration of
biomass
Efficient sensors
Intelligent
data administration
OptEnGrid
Cloud-based
micro-grids
Software and algorithms
Fuzzy systems
Cloud-based
computers
Automatic Transfer
Switches
Regulated
storage cycles
Predictive regulation
1001110000001
00111101110011
10101100011001
01101110001010
Market-ready
that contribute to regional supply. “This
will be really productive in three to four
years,” Käfer says.
This leads to more changes for energy
suppliers: In the future, instead of the
sale of kilowatt hours the focus will be on
(fair use) flat rates as are already common
on the Internet market. The prices will go
down since more renewable energy will be
available. Instead of flow, the price of energy
will rather be aligned to the logistics
services.

6 GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 7
From micro-grids to
Local Energy Communities
The EU’s Internal Market in Electricity Directive establishes Local Energy
Communities (LECs) that allow for efficient energy management at the local level.
Efficient and economical
water treatment
The existing concept of micro-grids, that
focusses mainly on the technical basis of
independent and partially independent
grid areas, is currently being expanded
to Local Energy Communities (LECs) as
per new EU requirements in the form of
the EU’s Internal Market in Electricity Directive.
In the framework of a large range
of various approaches that can all be regarded
as precursors of LECs, it was found
that they will quickly encounter legal barriers.
They are now supposed to be removed
and a regulatory and organisational
framework is supposed to be created in
LECs.
Andreas Türk
Senior Researcher at LIFE
andreas.tuerk@joanneum.at
Regulations create questions
LECs are supposed to answer the following:
Who can and may control and organise
LECs? The EU Directive in particular
specifies that instead of established
market players, they are to be organised
by SMEs, cooperatives and communities.
How to regulate the relationship between
LECs and network operators? What business
models can be connected to this?
How can a strong and active role of consumers
be ensured? Among others, LIFE,
the Centre for Climate, Energy and Society
at JOANNEUM RESEARCH, is looking into
these questions. LIFE participates in the
two ongoing Horizon2020 projects STO-
RY and COMPILE which are both supported
by large international consortia. Andreas
Türk, Senior Researcher at LIFE: “LECs
have the potential to become an efficient
energy management tool of the future at
the local level.”
The EU’s requirements are aimed at reducing
network tariffs through regulatory
simplification to allow for new business
models to be implemented. Apart from offering
energy LECs are supposed to be allowed
to provide energy efficiency services
and to integrate households.
New forecasting method
Due to the large percentage of decentralised
renewable sources of energy new methods
and algorithms for weather-related production
and consumption forecasting for a
large number of small units are essential for
a successful implementation of LECs. The
goal is to keep the control and communication
costs as low as possible. Only this will
allow the efficient use of new approaches.
If, as is expected, the EU’s Internal Market in
Electricity Directive is ratified this year, Austria
has two years to turn the Local Energy
Communities concept into national law.
Info
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft
mbH develops solutions
and technologies for various sectors of
the economy and industry and conducts
cutting-edge research at an international
level. Focussing on applied research and
technology development the INNOVA-
TION COMPANY maintains a key role in
technology and knowledge transfer.
LIFE – the Centre for Climate, Energy and
Society – deals with central issues related
to climate change. LIFE’s clear societal
mission includes strengthening resistance
against climate- and weather-related
risks and a transition to a low-carbon
economy and society by 2050.
www.joanneum.at
Photo credits: Joanneum Research, iStock
Photo credits: fluvicon
With his ‘forward osmosis’ technology Thomas Grießler has won
the Agri-Water Innovation Challenge.
With his ‘forward osmosis’ water purification
method Graz-based physicist Thomas
Grießler has won the Agri-Water Innovation
Challenge staged by the Austrian Foreign
Trade Office, causing a stir around the world.
The challenge was aimed at finding innovative
solutions to mitigate the lasting water
shortage in the South-African metropolis of
Cape Town as well as more efficient water
usage. The Green Tech Cluster made his participation
possible.
Thomas Grießler’s start-up fluvicon has been
working on his idea of ‘forward osmosis’
which offers significant benefits over traditional
technologies since its inception in 2013.
It saves up to 50 % of the energy required,
is sturdy and almost maintenance-free. Furthermore,
it allows for drinking water to be
recovered from the residual sludge produced
by water treatment plants. The method is
suitable for the purification of small to large
amounts of waste water that accrue in industrial
environments.
A passion for water
“During the week following the challenge
we received inquiries about the technology
GREEN TALENTS –
Introducing young researchers
Thomas Grießler has studied
at the Technical University of
Graz and founded his start-up
fluvicon in 2013 in Leoben with
the support of the Centre for
Applied Technologies.
He has developed the patent for
his ‘forward osmosis’ tech nology
himself. His mind is full of ideas
that wait to be implemented and
are aimed at making a difference
in the world.
from Canada, the Middle East and African
nations. Many of them from the oil and gas
industry and the mining industry,” Grießler
reports. These industries deal with ‘extremely
harmful water’ large amounts of which are
pumped out of the ground during oil extraction
together with the oil. The same is true
for mining where aggressive mine water is
extracted.
“Due to ever more stringent environmental
requirements there is lots of interest in solutions
to clean this bad water at low costs,”
Grießler, who studied at the Technical University
of Graz and who has “always been
passionate about water”, holds. He expects
the technology to be particularly successful
in the niche market of mining.
The development is currently in its pilot phase
but several contracts from various sectors of
the industry are already being processed. To
manufacture the systems Grießler works with
a team of six employees. The first systems
for the market will be delivered to customers
in mid-2019.
www.fluvicon.com

8 GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 9
Fresh
Green Tech
World’s largest sludge incineration plant
Bailonggang is Asia’s largest waste water treatment plant. ANDRITZ,
an international technology corporation based in Styria, will now
extend this plant to make it the largest sludge incineration plant in
the world using a 120 million Euro complete drying and incineration
system. The contract included engineering, production, delivery and
assembly as well as commissioning monitoring. With its capacity of
3,000 tonnes of sludge per day the waste water treatment plant will
serve as a reference plant for similar environmental technology projects
in China. Construction starts this year and the first incineration is
scheduled for late 2019. www.andritz.com
USA: World’s largest
briquetting presses
The question of the economic reprocessing of metal-bearing raw materials
is of central importance around the world. Among others, the
US relies on Styrian solutions. The latest delivery of an ATM recycling
system to the United States comprised three of the world’s largest briquetting
presses of the ArnoBrik 22 type. These three machines alone
press up to 15 tonnes of scrap metal per hour. The ArnoBrik series
machines process metal raw materials efficiently using filling valves
at the press cylinder, thus contributing to environmental protection.
www.atm-recyclingsystems.com
Technological leaders grow faster
The Green Tech Cluster’s companies can look back on a strong 2017.
Compared to 2016 their revenues have increased from 10.51 billion
to 10.65 billion Euros – a plus of 1.3 %. Its environmental engineering
companies have also grown their revenues – from 4.8 billion to
4.88 billion Euros (+ 1.5 %) At 4.2 % the environmental engineering
companies’ R&D ratio came in at a very high level, their investments
in R&D thus increased by 32 million Euros to a total of 418 million Euros
(+ 8 %). Technological leaders focussing heavily on R&D could
grow their revenue numbers by 9.2 %, expecting an increase in sales
amounting to 17.7 % while the other companies taken together only
managed 1.1 %. www.greentech.at
Million Euro contract from Ghana
With five mobile municipal waste treatment systems equipped with
state-of-the-art Styrian technology, Komptech contributes to solving
Ghana’s waste removal problem. The system produces compost
which is used by Ghana to green parks and streets. This sustainable
contribution to environmental protection is Komptech’s largest project
to date and rightly makes Managing Director Heinz Leitner proud:
“We are thus setting a first important footprint in Africa, an important
future market.” www.komptech.com
Industry giant relies on wastebox.biz
Already a major player on the Austrian market, wastebox.biz is now
set to conquer Germany, France and Great Britain. Wastebox.biz is
an intelligent platform linking customers and suppliers in real time
and offering all benefits of a modern online service. In Austria the
platform already numbers 50 waste disposal partners. International
environmental technology company Veolia now introduces the app
to the German market for the first time. With Veolia as a new partner
the online platform is supposed to become the leading company for
construction site waste disposal.
www.wastebox.biz
Photo credits: ANDRITZ, pink robin gmbh, Komptech, Shutterstock
Photo credits: Montanuniversität Leoben, ATM Recyclingsystems GmbH, Saubermacher Dienstleistungs AG, Shutterstock
New method to store
electric energy
Together with partners from the industrial and science Montanuniversität
Leoben is looking into novel methods of storing excess energy
from strongly fluctuating regenerative sources of energy. Using
power-to-gas methods renewable power can be stored in the form
of chemical energy carriers which are typically hydrogen or methane.
Conventional power-to-gas systems are based on the electrolysis of
water with an optional downstream methanation step. The goal of
this relatively young technology is of co-electrolysis is to combine
CO 2
and H 2
O with catalytic methanation in solid oxide cells (SOECs).
www.unileoben.ac.at
Solutions for ice-free
wind turbines
To measure the icing of wind turbines Styrian company eologix has
developed a sensor system for wind power plants that can be retrofitted
easily. The system consists of a base station and flexible sensors
that can be glued onto the rotor surface. The sensors measure
icing right where it happens. Today every second wind turbine in
Austria is equipped with an eologix ice detection system.
www.eologix.com
Battery recycling
as a service
Redux Recycling, a company that is part of the Saubermacher Group,
has set up a new high-tech recycling system for lithium-ion batteries
in Bremerhaven (D). It thereby uses an innovative method which allows
for a recycling ratio up to 40 % higher than the legal target. The
company’s ambitious goal is ‘zero waste’, in other words a long-term
recycling ratio of 100 %. Additionally Interseroh has created an online
portal offering proper transport as well as environmentally friendly
recycling of batteries used in industry and electric vehicles.
www.saubermacher.at

10
Cluster News
GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 11
Cluster sets Guiness World Record
European Commissioner for
Energy Miguel Arias Cañete
exchanging ideas with start-ups
from the Green Tech Valley.
The EU visits the
Green Tech Valley
The Green Tech Cluster is now also an official Guinness World Record
Holder – thanks to the world’s largest mosaic made from recyclable
material. To achieve this feat 200 Cluster partners set up a total of
5,388 egg cartons in the shape of a white and green LED lamp on an
area of 456 square metres in the context of this year’s Cluster reception.
The participants are now official Guinness World Record Holders for
the world’s ‘Largest Mosaic Made From Recyclable Materials’. The
mosaic’s LED symbol represents the more than 5,000 ideas the Green
Tech Cluster’s companies have generated and implemented over the
last 5 years. 35 industrial R&D projects were initiated in 2017 alone.
They include innovations that are already established on the market
such as a special barrel to collect lithium-ion batteries or a new heating
foil for thermal distribution systems. www.greentech.at
EU environmental ministers visit Austria’s largest sorting plant;
EU commissioner is impressed by Styria’s innovative start-ups.
Recycling solutions from the
one-stop-shop
In the framework of the informal meeting
of the EU’s environmental and transport
ministers in Graz in late October, Styria
hosted some important guests. The EU
delegation also paid a visit to Saubermacher
and was particularly interested in Austria’s
largest plastics sorting plant which
has been put into service only shortly before.
The machine made by REDWAVE
separates some 32,000 tonnes of packaging
waste from households and commerce.
Its technical highlight is a designated ‘bottle
flattener’ that allows for a higher sorting
efficiency by flattening PET bottles.
Thanks to a foil separator, near-infrared
sorting machine and non-ferrous metal
separator, the unit reliably sorts 14 plastic
fractions as well as aluminium cans and
bonded drinks cartons. This is essential for
the manufacture of new products and an
important contribution to the achievement
of the objectives of the EU Recycling Pact.
“By raising awareness about correct waste
separation and with the reduction of CO 2
emissions thanks to smart logistics, innovative
business models, ever increasing
recycling ratios and new processing systems,
we are on a good path,” said Ralf
Mittermayr, the Speaker of the Board of
Saubermacher AG. The new system allows
for waste materials to be processed
in such a way that they can be returned
back to the cycle.
The delegation was furthermore provided
with insights into the wastebox.biz online
platform which offers construction
EU environmental ministers are provided hands-on
information about the Styrian best-practice examples.
site waste disposal at the push of a button,
Smart Waste, a system that increases
waste separation using high-tech sensors
as well as Future Waste which allows
for the sustainable recycling of lithium-ion
batteries.
With many innovative companies being
members of the Green Tech Cluster, Styria
plays a pioneering role in the EU: A fact
that also convinced the EU ministers.
Another thing that happened in late October
was the awarding of the State Prize in
the category of Environment & Technology.
Five out of nine award winners came
from Styria. Compuritas GmbH from Graz
brought home the special award for Resource
Efficiency.
State Prize award ceremony: Five out of nine award
winners came from Styria.
Photo credits: Saubermacher, Staatspreis, pixelmaker.at
Photo credits: Fotostudio Helmut Jokesch, dontwasteinvest, Green Tech Cluster
Plug & Play Innovation Box for your market success
Innovation is changing: It needs to become faster and fit the market
even better to boost corporate growth. The Green Tech Cluster offers
support with its Plug & Play Innovation Box. In it we have compiled
the very innovation tools we go to to create innovations in our daily
jobs. These easy-to-use tools will help you identify market trends,
develop highly creative ideas, learn from market and customer
feedback in faster iteration loops as well as develop and implement
new business models. The box contains 20 ready-to-use tools with
templates and instructions for their implementation, among others
for better customer interviews, practical design thinking, TRIZ Trigger
Cards, Lego Serious Play, TimeTimer für awesome workshops, Lean
Innovation Canvas, Personas with User Journey as well as St. Gallen
Business Model Cards. Cluster partners can pick the box up for 299
€ non-partners pay 499 € (plus 20 % VAT) which also includes a free
start workshop in Graz to familiarise yourself with the tools. Order
yours directly at welcome@greentech.at
www.greentech.at/innovationsbox
Note: The tools and workshop are available in German!
“Don’t waste – invest’ is a campaign in whose context global
technological leaders have joined forces for the first time under the
leadership of the Green Tech Cluster. They optimise the consistency
of the waste management value creation chain and together offer
complete waste management solutions – from collection, processing
to recycling and upstream industrial research and collaboration
between public authorities and lawmakers. Together they offer
perfect one-stop-shop recycling solutions for the communal sector
of the waste management industry. The Green Tech Cluster serves
as the campaign’s coordinator and guarantees smooth and reliable
service as a first point of contact. www.dontwasteinvest.com

12 GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 13
Green
Lifestyle
DIY air quality sensor
Clean & fresh
Water supply
Using the new health check
municipalities and communities can
examine their water and waste water network
in a straight-forward way and thus evaluate
their future investment demands.
Green power station for the balcony
SolMate, a small solar power station for the balcony created by Graz-based
start-up EET, makes self-made power a reality for everyone. Its special highlight
is the included storage system and state-of-the-art measuring technology
that provides green power exactly when the washing machine, PC or
oven need it. Even its installation is super easy: The solar panels are attached
on the balcony, the cable connected to the storage system and the latter to
the power outlet and voilà: You are now producing your own green power.
www.eet.energy
Stuttgart and Graz have one thing in common: Fine dust
pollution. Stuttgart’s Neckartor is the “Germany’s dirtiest
street”, often exceeding the limit values every year. Stuttgart
only has five official measuring stations. Not enough
to provide comprehensive monitoring, according to local
fine dust activist Jan Lutz. Together with other volunteers
he has founded the OK Lab which now offers an affordable
DIY fine dust sensor, allowing everyone to set up their
own measuring station. The data thus collected is displayed
on a live map showing the pollution on the respective day.
The network already consists of hundreds of fine dust
sensors all over Europe, many of them located in Austria.
www.luftdaten.info
When we open the tap at home we want clean drinking
water to come out. When we flush the toilet we want
to be sure that the waste water is properly disposed of.
Almost all households connected to the public drinking
and waste water network can fully rely on this. Some
44,000 km of drinking and waste water lines (including
house connection pipes) were created for Styria’s 1.2 million
people over the course of the past decades. Now, the
challenge is to preserve the values created for the long
term and at a sound level.
With the initiative Zukunft Siedlungswasserwirtschaft
Steiermark – VORSORGEN, the Province of Styria wants
to raise awareness for the topic of operating the water
and waste water infrastructure in a forward-looking, consistent
and financially acceptable way.
Line network know-how
Its VORSORGE Check was developed with expert supervision
by the Technical University of Graz and the Agriculture
University of Vienna. In three stages, this check
provides a first assessment of the extent and urgency of
actions required regarding the respective entity’s own
line networks. The only rough information one needs to
enter are the network’s length, the estimated construction
costs, the age of the line network as well as the used
construction materials and methods. After just entering
a small amount of data, a calculation result is immediately
available, and the user’s own plans for network renewal
or rehabilitation can be compared with scientifically
based mean values. The great additional benefit:
This can save the valuable resource of water, because
pipe leaks and damage lead to expensive water losses.
Of course, the handy online tool cannot replace
the necessary network investigations on
site or the installation of a line information system.
Using this health check and the reinvestment plan creates
the basis for reinvestment required in the future and
the largely invisible parts of the infrastructure for drinking
water supply and sewage disposal are being highlighted
again.
www.wasseraktiv.at/vorsorgecheck
(Link only available in German)
Photo credits: Shutterstock
Photo credits: Twycer, Pilzkiste, eet.energy, luftdaten.info
Coffee to grow
PILZKISTE, a company
founded by
three women in Graz,
specialises in growing
Chinese mushrooms.
What’s so
special about that
you ask? Their growth
substrate is coffee
grounds. PILZKISTE’s
philosophy is as simple
as it is sustainable:
The people of Graz
consume about six tonnes of coffee every day while the grounds are usually
thrown away into residual waste bins. PILZKISTE capitalises on these available
resources to grow Chinese mushrooms. Since sustainability and environmentally
concious as well as preserving conduct represent the guiding
principle of PILZKISTE, the used coffee grounds are collected from various
coffee houses, restaurants and hotels in Graz and used as the main ingredient
of the substrate on which the mushrooms grow. www.pilzkiste.at
Good overfishing
Amsterdam is well known for its tight network of canals from
the 17 th century, its house boats and popular excursions. Environmental
organisation Plastic Whale which refers to itself
as the world’s “first professional plastic fishing company”
offers a truly special such excursion: A two-hour sightseeing
tour complete with collecting waste in the canals. Passengers
are equipped with mesh nets which they use to fish
mostly plastic waste out of the canals. Plastic Whale has a
fleet of ten boats and wants to clean Amsterdam’s canals by
means of “overfishing”. Up to today it managed to fish some
200,000 plastic bottles out of the water. A beneficial side
effect: The bottles collected are then turned into boats and
furniture. www.plasticwhale.com

14 GREEN TECH MAGAZINE 15
Thermaflex:
The future
of renewable
heating grids
Using seven demonstration examples the Thermaflex model project highlights
the optimisation and flexibilisation possibilities of district heating grids of
various sizes.
In 2016 Austria’s space heating requirements
came in at approx. 87 TWh/a at
a total energy demand of 311 TWh/a. A
quarter of that is provided by grid-connected
heating supply in the form of
more than 2,000 district heating systems.
Thus the local and district heating
sector already assumes a central role in
Austria’s energy supply. Thanks to infrastructure
already installed (approx. 5,400
km of lines), the existing potential of expansion
especially in urban areas and the
use of new concepts, technologies and
sources of renewable energy and more,
this sector will become even more important
in the future.
In a sustainable and fully de-carbonised
energy system, large amounts of renewable,
sometimes volatile energy carriers, integrated
sector linking, decentralised energy
conversion structures etc. will lead to
significantly increased system complexity.
Green heat S – M – L
This is where the Thermaflex model project
comes in: Within the showcase region
of the ‘GreenEnergyLab’ it focuses on increasing
energy flexibility and the resulting
CO 2
emission reductions in the district
heating sector. “27 project partners (district
heating operators, technology providers
and research institutions) are involved in
simulation-supported planning and implementation
measures. The focus is thereby
on seven model demonstrators in district
Wolfgang Jilek’s Cartoon
heating areas, from small to medium sized
to large cities,” illustrate Christian Fink and
Ingo Leusbrock from AEE INTEC. Thermaflex
is funded with some nine million Euros
which makes this project the largest in the
‘Energy Model Regions’ programme. Thermaflex
took off in November 2018 and will
be implemented under the leadership of
AEE INTEC until 2022.
Photo credits: Salzburg AG/Gebhard Segmüller, Wolfgang Jilek
Low-carbon district
heating for Leibnitz
The possibility of a targeted use of
waste heat from production enterprises
is the basis for this undertaking. The
expansion of the district heating area by
the multi-directional linking of existing
heating grid areas of different
ownership is being accelerated.
Gleisdorf virtual
heating plant
In Gleisdorf the central
element is the linking of the
waste water treatment plant
with the energy supply of the City
of Gleisdorf. The plan sees the biogas
output of the waste water treatment plant’s
digestion tower to be increased and the
waste biogas being used in a biogas
CHP system to produce renewable
power and heat. A massive 500
m³ water heat accumulator is
supposed to be part of this
‘virtual heating plant’.
Big Solar Salzburg
The study assessed the possibilities
of the integration of a Big Solar
approach into the City of Salzburg’s
district heating grid. The essential elements
of this concept are a central solar
power farm connected to a large
water heat accumulator directly
coupled to a large heat pump.
Heat recovery via
waste water
At the Vienna-Liesing location
energy is supposed to be extracted
from waste water in the local sewer to
continuously feed heat into the district’s
secondary heating grid by means of a
compression heat pump. The total
system is supposed to produce
more than 500 kW of heat.
Energy Island Weiz
Within the next couple of years
the Weiz-Nord district is supposed
to be developed dynamically and fully
supported with renewable energy from
the region. District heating / island solutions
play a central role for grid-connected
heating and refrigeration
supply in this district.
Green energy park
Salzburg-South
The return temperature of the
existing waste heat system of
Salzburg-Hallein is going to be lowered
to exploit an industrial operation’s
low temperature waste heat potential that
can currently not be used. An absorption
heat pump in the MW range is
supposed to receive its operating
energy extracted from the
waste steam of a cogeneration
system.
Exploiting the energy
in flue gas
This project is aimed at exploiting
the accruing waste heat
from flue gas condensation in the
Vienna-Spittelau waste incineration
plant as the energy source for a heat
pump. Tests of various operating strategies
are supposed to return insights
on how the heat can best be fed
directly into the City of Vienna’s
primary district heating
grid.

16
Did you know?
The world’s cheapest solar collector
Styrian company suntap has developed the world’s most affordable
solar hot water heater. The rollable device can be installed on the roof
in a few simple steps and is particularly aimed at emerging markets.
These often face the problem that power and gas are unaffordable
which is why meals and hot water are boiled over open flames behind
the house, which contributes to air pollution and threatens forests
close to settlements. This is where this Styrian innovation provides affordable
and sustainable help. www.suntap.solar
Swift progress with hydrogen
A world first: Since September the world’s first hydrogen trains have
been rolling across the landscape in Germany’s local transportation
system. Mounted on the roof are a hydrogen tank and a fuel cell in
which hydrogen and oxygen are converted into electrical power for
the electric motor. Excess energy is temporarily stored in a battery in
the floors of the individual cars. The astonishingly quiet trains travel
at up to 140 km/h and are capable of covering some 1,000 kilometres
with one filling of the tank. In the long term they are supposed to replace
all Diesel-powered trains in Germany. www.alstom.com
Gleaming solar park
A new solar park putting out 1 megawatt was taken into service at the
Chernobyl site that saw one of the worst nuclear disasters in human
history. Since the region will still be uninhabitable for a long time solar
modules were installed that require little to no human interaction.
For the region and Ukraine the solar power plant is a symbol for a
first sign of life following the 1986 disaster. The new solar park with
its 3,800 modules produces solar power for the region’s inhabitants.
www.solarchernobyl.com
More profit thanks to green energy
The image is not the only thing that grows. Companies sourcing power
from sources of renewable energy also surpass their competition in
terms of their financial performance, as proven by a report created by
RE100, an initiative of the international Climate Group. It compares the
financial results of 150 companies that use green power with those of
more than 3,000 competitors. The result: Companies that use green
power surpass the others in terms of net profit margin and earnings
before interest and taxes (EBIT). The difference ranges between 0.3
and more than 7 per cent. An additional effect: The more companies
use green power the cheaper it gets. www.theclimategroup.org
Photo credits: Renè Frampe, Suntap, Shutterstock, istock