Peter Oberbacher is self sufficient with electricity and heat by wood gasifier

The Oberbacher family’s Inn River Valley four-sided farmyard is located in the Bavarian Alpine foreland, bordering to the northern Chiemgau area. Existing for more than 500 years, the agricultural enterprise at the time of his great grandparents still actively utilized an ox-driven capstan. At that time the energy so generated by the movement of animals was used to drive various agricultural facilities. Thereby a transmission line shaft brought the mechanical power to the respective places of consumption.

Now exactly from the former place of the capstan the HKA 10 also supplies a small existing sawmill, the residential building with integrated maintenance area, and the other equipment and machinery still needed today with electric power.

And since three months, the HKA 10 supplements the wood chip heating system installed around the end of the nineties with 25 kW of power in form of heat. For generations the “Stockererhof’s” own forestland of a little more than eight hectares is facilitating the self-supply with the regionally produced natural resource of wood in form of side job forest cultivation. The storage of wood chips and their means of transport to the HKA 10 Peter Oberbacher has placed in the existing barn. A drying process for the wood chips has been integrated into the Spanner Re² storage and discharging system by personal contribution. Sieving of the wood chips happens by means of a Spanner Re² fine particle sieve just before feeding them into the combined heating and power plant on site.

Right from the beginning the HKA 10 is performing a reliable and sound operation and meanwhile has reached ca. 2,000 operating hours. Approximately 20,000 kWh of electric power is consumed annually at the farmyard itself, and another ca. 35,000 kWh per year can be fed into the public electric power grid in addition. The extensively automated operation of the HKA 10 allows Peter Oberbacher aside from his occupation to have spare time for his family, the manufacture of sturdy garden table suits as well as for his great passion, the collection of historical tractors.