Ursin and Nicole Riedi’s cows generate electricity

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At Morissen GR in Val Lumnezia, 30 dairy cows and young cattle and several horses generate electricity and heat for the home of Nicole and Ursin Riedi and their three children. In a mini biogas plant built with the new house.

In 2004, Ursin Riedi (44) took over the barn just outside the village from his family. He lives in the village and always has to drive out to look after the cows. There was a desire to build a house next to the barn so that he could go to his animals at any time. “Even in pajamas if necessary,” says Riedi. But how can you heat a house and dispose of wastewater if it is not connected to a sewage treatment plant?

persuasion and financial aid

Thanks to his friends and relatives, Riedi came up with the idea to build a small biogas plant with a combined heat and power plant, thereby generating electricity, using fertilizer and household wastewater on the one hand, and finally making liquid fertilizer. It doesn’t smell. “This way we can use anything and protect the environment,” Riedi says confidently.

It took a lot of persuasion, perseverance and help to get everything implemented. Municipalities, cantons and insurance companies needed to be convinced that working with gas was not dangerous. Financial assistance for the construction of the plant was provided by Schweizer Berghilfe.

liquid manure, wastewater and cheese factory waste

Today, Riedi uses fertilizer to generate one-third of the electricity and two-thirds of the heat in a climate-neutral way. “For this we need five cubic meters of substrate. That means around 25 tubs of wastewater and curtain volume in summer is cheese waste,” he explains.

Riedi uses the liquid residue as liquid fertilizer. When she opens a manhole cover in the front yard, she only smells a faint musty aftertaste, instead of the pungent ammonia she’d been expecting. It does not smell even when you pour the liquid manure on the shovel and pull it out of the manhole.

However, Riedi is not primarily enthusiastic about the lack of odor or just the heating power, but above all about the effect as a liquid fertilizer. “With raw manure or liquid manure, grasses and weeds are sometimes very polluted and their photosynthetic performance is restricted—it’s like covering solar cells,” she explains. His manure doesn’t do that. Riedi also distributes them with drag hoses to keep them as close to the ground as possible.

for the next generation

What does the farmer do in the warm season when the cows are outside and do not fertilize? To ensure there is still enough fermentation material, Riedi takes the organic waste from the cheese factory with it after the milk is delivered. She also buys chicken manure from another farmer. “Our biogas plant is not an isolated solution. We all work together here,” says the 44-year-old farmer. This is how Riedis feeds the excess energy into the electricity grid. They never had very little energy.

“Thanks to the fertilizer, finer and different grasses are already growing again, we are producing our energy in a more climate-neutral way, and I can look after the animals whenever I want without having to get in the car,” Riedi summarizes. But the most important thing for him: “The next generation can live here in an environmentally friendly way.” As if waiting for a sign, Nicole and Ursin Riedi’s son is returning on his bike.

Source : Blick