Watermill Rotselaar
The pilot project in Belgium is situated at the watermill of Rotselaar on the river Dijle. Heat will be extracted from the river, most likely in a closed loop system with the heat exchanger immersed in the water behind the water turbine. Heat will be boosted via one central or several decentral heat pumps and then utilised via a small-scale heat network to heat the surrounding dwellings in the cohousing project, the bakery, the organic vegetable/fruit shop, meeting rooms and offices in the mill building itself. This is Ecopower's first small-scale aquathermal energy project.
This approach will also be of benefit to
the business case of the mill's green power production. Although the mill was
generating, distributing and supplying green electricity to the village between
1907 and 1947, distribution is now a monopoly of the municipal DSO and the
revised legislation does not allow the electricity produced at the mill to be
supplied via a microgrid directly to households. However, the green electricity
may be used directly to power the heat pump.