Volkswagen Introduces intelligent design mini Power Plants

Last week, Germany saw a shake up over green energy sources. Across many major cities multiple anti-nuclear energy demonstrators took to the steets and spoke out strongly against the use of nuclear energy.

The result of such sentiments are however, making an impact as many German businesses are now turning their interests in investing more time and capital into cleaner and renewable energy sources.

Only just merging with Porsche last months, German Car and Vans auto maker Volkswagen has one such ambitious project planned. Together with Lichtblick AG, a clean energy provider, they announced their plans to build thousands of mini power plants that could be literally installed in the basements of buildings. Such power plants could be used for electricity and heating purposes, creating a decentralized energy grid.

These power plants would have intelligent design and together form a network of thousands or even hundreds of thousands with a capability to generate an enormous amount of electricity. According to Der Spiegel, the electricity generated from such mini power plants connected together could replace at least 2 large nuclear or coal power plants in Germany.

Volkswagen is known for its automotive engineering, maintaining excellent road mileage on its new and used vans and cars. The mini power plants will be powered by the same engine that’s used in the VW Golf model, except that the engine would be powered by natural gas, not petroleum.

According to Der Spiegel, VW’s mini power plants have an efficiency of 94 percent, while most atomic power plants have 30 to 40 percent efficiency. Volkswagen plans to manufacture around 10,000 mini plant engines per year in its factory in Salzgitter, Germany, to cope with the demand.

VW is not new to producing energy, however. It already has built five large power plants located in Germany and Czech Republic that produce heat and electricity.

For the mini power plants, VW plans to utilize the technology it already has from building car engines, by broadening its application to produce electricity.

During economic times when consumers are refraining from buying cars, it could indeed turn out to be a smart future investment by Volkswagen to diversify its business.