In Nechlin, 17 wind turbines generate around 70 million kilowatt hours of CO2-free electricity annually. On particularly windy days, more energy is generated than can be fed in, so that it has to be limited several times a month. Overall, up to 5 percent of the wind power remains unused.
As the wind heat storage in Nechlin shows, this electricity can be used to generate heat on site. This is because the wind turbines are particularly often limited in winter when the heating in the houses has to provide the most heat. As soon as the systems at Nechlin are limited in strong winds, the heating elements in the wind heat accumulator start up automatically. The wind field is directly connected to the storage system via a power cable. There, heating coils heat up around a million liters of water to up to 93 degrees Celsius. If necessary, the hot water is then released into the local district heating network. The store only needs a few hours to heat up in strong winds and can supply the village with heat for up to two weeks. The wind heat from Nechlin is not only 100% CO2-free, but also significantly cheaper than oil heating.
The Nechlin wind heat storage unit is part of the WindNODE project and the SINTEG funding program. In
particular, the experimentation clause created for SINTEG made the economical operation of the wind heat storage possible.
