AFP, published on Thursday, February 02, 2023 at 5:56 p.m.
The Alsatian village of Muttersholtz is a forerunner: 15 years before anyone else, it tackled energy saving issues head on and was well inspired by installing three turbines on its river. Enough to welcome the rise in bills “with a certain detachment”.
While electricity prices increase on February 1 throughout France, the elected officials of this village of 2,200 inhabitants, in place since 2008, understood very early on the need to launch a savings program for municipal infrastructure.
Mayor Patrick Barbier and his team, re-elected twice since, began by reducing the night lighting.
“We were criticized a lot at the time but today everyone does it,” recalls Michel Renaudet, first deputy. “People were afraid that crime would increase, that there would be more burglaries at night.”
The threat did not materialize and these savings, combined with the insulation of public buildings, made it possible to reduce the municipality’s consumption by 40% between 2008 and 2020.
But Muttersholtz, a typical Alsatian village with its half-timbered houses and stork nests, elected French capital of biodiversity in 2017, has moved up a gear.
“We were aware that we were going into a wall in terms of the scarcity of energy sources. Of course, we did not think that a conflict would arise like in Ukraine, but the driving force was already to work ambitiously on energy saving. And then we started production.” First with photovoltaics on the roofs of several buildings, then hydroelectric.
– “No more bills” –
The village was somehow predestined: the story goes that under the German annexation (1870-1918), conquered by a visit to the Frankfurt electricity fair, the miller had converted his mill to produce electricity thanks to in the flow of the river. The municipality bought this modest power station, which had been closed since 1965, and reinstalled a turbine there.
It was also equipped in 2019, a few hundred meters away, with two new turbines on the Ill, a tributary of the Rhine. An investment of just over 2 million euros.
“We were taken for crazy,” smiles Michel Renaudet. “When we started the process, with costs that may seem astronomical, many asked themselves the question: is it really worth spending so much money to build a micro-power plant? But today we are fully rewarded. “
Thanks to aid from the State and the region, the municipality only pays 650,000 euros, and hopes to amortize its investment over 20 years. With the explosion in electricity prices, the amortization will be much faster.
“Since September we have gone directly to self-consumption: we take 10% of our production capacity to supply public buildings and public lighting, that is enough for us to be autonomous. So not only do we no longer have a bill electricity, we are just subject to the tax on the use of the public network, but the remaining 90%, we resell them”, continues Mr. Renaudet.
– “Solutions multiples” –
The calculations are quickly made: “With today’s prices, we save 43,000 euros per year in electricity, and the sale brings us around 60,000 euros, even if we also have maintenance costs”, explains Julien Rodrigues , secretary general of the town hall.
“We have not yet opened to individuals, this will be a next step, but for the moment it only covers municipal needs”, underlines Mr. Renaudet.
For the time being, despite an annual production of around 900 megawatts/hour thanks to its solar and hydroelectric installations, only 7% of the total needs of the village would be covered, if we take into account households and businesses. It would take two wind turbines, or an area equivalent to seven football fields of photovoltaic panels to also cover all the inhabitants. So many lines of thought.
In any case, the village is welcoming more and more elected officials from other municipalities, who have come from all over France or even from Germany to take advice and see how to draw inspiration from it.
“Obviously, not everyone can make a hydroelectric power station, but photovoltaics is open to all regions of France, wind power too. There are many solutions”, underlines Michel Renaudet.
