A village of 130 people in Brandenburg, 80 km south of Berlin, runs its own electrical grid. Not connected to the national one. Not partially off-grid, or “nearly” self-sufficient. Feldheim disconnected entirely in 2010 and has not looked back. Residents pay around 12 euro cents per kilowatt hour for electricity, roughly a third of the German national average. When wholesale prices tripled during the 2022 energy crisis, Feldheim’s bills did not move. That is what genuine energy independence looks like at community scale.
Location: Feldheim, Treuenbrietzen, Brandenburg, Germany
Technology: Wind, solar PV, biogas, battery storage + independent grid
System size: 124 MW wind, 2.25 MWp solar, 526 kW biogas, 10 MW / 10.8 MWh battery
Homes/people served: ~130 residents (37 households)
Operational since: October 2010
Key outcome: Electricity at ~€0.12/kWh vs national average of ~€0.35/kWh
What Feldheim was up against
Feldheim sits in the Fläming heath, a flat, sparsely populated stretch of former East Germany. After reunification in 1990, the village faced the same problems as hundreds of similar settlements: young people leaving, farms consolidating, public investment drying up. By the mid-1990s, Feldheim had about 145 residents and very little economic activity beyond an agricultural cooperative.
The turning point came in 1993, when Michael Raschemann, then a university student and now managing director of the project development company Energiequelle GmbH, proposed installing wind turbines on the flat farmland surrounding the village. Farmers were sceptical at first. But the land was ideal for wind, the cooperative owned it collectively, and the lease income was attractive. Four Enercon E-40 turbines went up in 1995. That was the beginning.
How they built it
Over the following 15 years, the wind farm expanded in phases. Today, 55 turbines stand on the farmland around Feldheim, with a combined capacity of 124 MW. They generate roughly 200 million kWh per year. The village itself consumes less than 0.5% of that output. The rest is exported, supplying the equivalent of about 40,000 households.
Wind alone was not enough. A biogas plant, fed by 4,900 m³ of slurry, 7,900 tonnes of maize and 620 tonnes of grain meal each year, generates around 4 million kWh of electricity annually and provides heat via a local district heating network. A 2.25 MWp solar array, consisting of 9,844 panels on 284 tracking mounts, sits on a former Soviet military base nearby. On cold winter evenings, a woodchip heating plant burning deadwood from local forests tops up the heat supply.
In 2015, Energiequelle invested €12.8 million in a 10 MW / 10.8 MWh lithium-ion battery storage system (3,360 LG Chem modules), which was the largest in Europe at the time. It provides primary frequency regulation for the wider transmission grid, generating revenue while stabilising local supply.
The critical piece, though, was the grid itself. Feldheim’s residents formed Feldheim Energie GmbH & Co. KG, a limited partnership between 49 resident co-owners, the city of Treuenbrietzen, local businesses, the agricultural cooperative and Energiequelle. Each household invested around €3,000. A further €830,000 came from EU and state funding, and €757,000 from a bank loan. That paid for 3 km of cables connecting the wind farm and biogas plant directly to every home, completely bypassing the national distribution grid and its associated fees.
What actually happened
Feldheim’s electricity price has held at around €0.12/kWh (before tax) for years. The rates are contractually fixed for ten-year periods. When Germany’s average household electricity price spiked to roughly €0.45/kWh during the 2022 energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, Feldheim residents saw no change. Their supply chain had no exposure to natural gas or wholesale markets.
| Metric | Feldheim | German average |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity price (per kWh) | €0.12 | ~€0.35 |
| Price during 2022 crisis | €0.12 (unchanged) | ~€0.45 |
| Heating fuel replaced annually | 180,000 litres of heating oil equivalent | n/a |
| Annual wind generation | 200 million kWh | n/a |
The Neue Energien Forum Feldheim (NEF), an education and visitor centre, now welcomes over 3,000 people a year, including delegations from India, the United States and South Korea. Former chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the village. In 2024, the German UNESCO Commission awarded the centre its “Education for Sustainable Development” recognition.
The honest limitations: Feldheim is tiny. Replicating this model in a town of 10,000 would involve orders-of-magnitude more complexity in grid design, capital and governance. The village also sits on flat, windy farmland with cooperative land ownership, conditions that simply do not exist everywhere. And the 55 turbines produce roughly 250 times the village’s own consumption, so the economics depend heavily on export revenue, not just self-supply.
What this means for you
Feldheim proves one thing clearly: a community that owns its own generation and distribution assets can decouple from national energy price volatility. The EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) now explicitly supports “renewable energy communities” and requires member states to remove regulatory barriers to them. The UK’s community energy sector, while smaller, is growing through organisations like Community Energy England.
You do not need 55 wind turbines. The transferable lesson from Feldheim is the ownership structure: residents pooling €3,000 each, forming a legal entity, and buying their own distribution infrastructure. That model works for shared solar arrays, community battery storage, or district heating networks. The technology is standard. The hard part is getting 37 households to agree, and Feldheim shows that part is possible too.
FAQ
Is Feldheim completely disconnected from the German national grid?
Yes. Since October 2010, all electricity and heat in Feldheim is supplied through the village’s own independent grid, connected directly to local wind turbines, a biogas plant and solar arrays. There is no connection to the national distribution network.
How much did each household invest?
Each of the 49 co-owner households invested around €3,000 to help fund the 3 km local grid. EU grants and a bank loan covered the rest of the approximately €1.7 million total grid cost.
Can other villages copy the Feldheim model?
The ownership and financing structure is replicable. The scale of wind generation is specific to Feldheim’s geography and land ownership. Communities elsewhere are more likely to start with shared solar, community batteries, or district heating, but the legal framework (Feldheim Energie GmbH & Co. KG) offers a proven template.
What happens when the wind does not blow?
The biogas plant provides baseload electricity and heat around the clock. The 10 MW battery handles short-term fluctuations. On cold, still winter evenings, the woodchip heating plant supplements the heat supply. In 16 years of operation, Feldheim has not experienced a supply failure.
Photos by Bernd Dittrich via Unsplash.
