Wind power generation along the saale valley picks up speed. A total of six wind turbines are to be erected near fuchsstadt and sulzthal in 2019. At fuchsstadt, preliminary work has almost been completed with the clearing of the three sites for the giant towers. Over the summer, the access roads that have already been staked out are to be built there before the foundations are started. In the forest near sulzthal, work is scheduled to start in october because clearing is no longer permitted during the upcoming vegetation period. Since both wind farms are located on municipal land, the towns expect considerable income from them.
Already under discussion for a long time
The plants have been under discussion for a long time. They are now possible because green city energy AG with its plant for fuchsstadt and enercon gmbh for sulzthal prevailed in the first nationwide round of bidding in 2018.
"The award for a moderate wind site was only possible through consistent replanning to the latest generation of wind turbines with coarse hub heights", according to green city energy ceo jens muhlhaus in a company press release. The type of senvion turbine selected for fuchsstadt has a nominal height of 165 meters and a rotor diameter of 144 meters. With 16,000 square meters of rotor surface, it is one of the quietest on the market, according to the manufacturer. The turbines, each with an output of 3.7 megawatts, generate 27 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year, equivalent to the consumption of 8000 households. The turbines near sulzthal will be somewhat smaller. They will have a rotor diameter of 115 meters and a hub height of 149 meters, as well as a rated output of three megawatts. "I’m glad the project is finally through", fuchsstadt mayor peter hart is relieved. For the first time, only plants for which construction permits were available were considered in the tendering procedures. In the previous procedures, some of the plants were not ready for construction. For the construction in the forest there are rough conditions. For example, a wind turbine at the edge of the forest at the fuchsstadter park was deleted from the designs so as not to endanger species occurrences.
To compensate for the three clearing sites with a total area of 1.9 hectares, 1.3 hectares must be reforested on the zimmerberg. Green city also transfers 200,000 euros to the county for nature conservation projects, including the installation of 150 nesting boxes, hart reports. The municipality expects revenues of at least 80,000 euros per year.
Sulzthal’s mayor august weingart is satisfied with the decision in favor of enercon. The municipal council will deal with the expected progress of construction next monday. In order to accommodate critics of the project, a fourth wind turbine has been removed from the plan and the locations of the others have been changed. A referendum was not held, despite the number of votes required to initiate it, because the community had already committed itself by contract. Green city energy also uses its announcement of the start of construction to criticize the hurdles in bavaria against the construction of wind farms. In the first of four bidding rounds in 2018, fuchsstadt and sulzthal were the only two bavarian projects already approved to win out of 132 bids. In total, the tendered quantity of 700 megawatts was only slightly oversubscribed at 989 megawatts. Even if the value of the current tender is 4.73 cents per kilowatt hour, which is significantly higher than the speculative value of the last round of tenders (3.82 cents), "this is not enough for a sufficient expansion of wind energy in the sense of the improved synchronization of renewable energies and grid capacities defined in the current coalition agreement", MOUNTAINS.
Better regional control is needed to counter the north-south divide. "For a reliable expansion of production quality south of the grid bottleneck, a suddeutsch minimum share in the tender is indispensable", demands green city. Dubi