A combined heat and power plant is the hidden key asset of a leading green hotel in South Tyrol

Naturhotel Leitlhof in San Candido comes with much more than just a wonderful pool that is heated with the excess heat of a wood-fired power plant. Curious? Check out my interview with Stephan Mühlmann the owner and managing director of Leitlhof and LeitlEnergie.

Stephan, “nature” is part of your hotel name. What is so special about ‘Nature Hotel Leitlhof’?

Nature is our luxury in the Dolomites. At the center of the transformation towards a climate-friendly hotel is our combined heat and power plant (CHP), which runs on gasified wood chips that largely come from our own forest. We significantly reduce our carbon footprint and control our energy bill which was necessary when we added a large outdoor pool in 2011.

Leitlhof is a real pioneer in sustainable heat and power! What were the key challenges when you set up your CHP plant back in 2012?

In 2012, we were really ahead of time - which also created some challenges. The core of our plant is rather standardized and comes from the German provider Spanner Re² GmbH . However, key optimizations according to the specific needs of our hotel and our environmental conditions here in South Tyrol made the plant also an economic success. I had to dive deeply into the technology to do this optimization, I even learned how to weld.

And what about solar?

A key success factor was the integration of a 40 kWp solar power plant that is on the roof of the CHP plant. There is an air cushion behind the solar modules. We use the air in two different ways. Most of the time, the air is heated up by the monocrystalline modules. We use this heat to dry the wood before feeding them to the CHP plant. In wintertime, we often have some snowfall and then cold temperatures for several days. Excess heat from the CHP is used to heat the solar panels and melt the snow. This has increased the yield of our solar PV system by more than 25% - we now have almost the same output as a solar power plant in Southern Italy.

How does sustainable energy turn into a customer experience at Leitlhof?

The CHP plant is also the key enabler for reducing the carbon footprint of our guests which is as low as 12.2 kg/per night. We can provide the full-luxury hotel experience to our guests – but they can enjoy it even more and have a good conscience when they swim in our pool with an unmatched view of our local Haunold mountain as the pool is heated with excess heat from our power plant.

More and more guests are so curious about our approach that we organize typically once a week a guided power plant tour. We even regularly received groups that stay for seminars at the hotel because of the CHP plant and our sustainable approach.

That all sounds good! But I guess that does not come for free. How much do your clients pay more for this sustainable experience?

Actually, they pay less as our energy costs are lower. Our innovative approach in combination with incentives in the form of feed-in-tariffs allowed us to completely eliminate our heat and power costs before the energy crisis. The system is rather complicated, but it mainly consists of feed-in all the self-generated energy into the grid at a fixed price and then buying green electricity back from the power grid. The cost advantage is still significant today.

Last but not least, let’s talk about e-mobility as transportation to and from the holiday destination is also a key emission factor of holidays!

At Leitlhof, our guests can charge for free. We recently added two new ABB chargers – sometimes I make the joke that the e-car is then powered by wood!

Thank you very much for the invite, Naturhotel Leitlhof!

#travel #sustainability #southtyrol