La Brévine: district heating in the coldest village in Switzerland

Goodbye, oil tanks!

At Monique and Marcel Brandt's house, near the center of the village, we also talk about cold and heating. Their two-storey house built in 1896 has already undergone several transformations.
In their cellar, they have installed a heating substation for connection to the electricity network District heating. Carefully stored garden tools are kept in one of the many other rooms in the cellar, which previously housed three oil tanks. The municipal administrator finds the system both reliable and comfortable: the room temperature is always sufficient, and there is no need to order fuel oil or have it swept.

A long-term and sustainable investment

On the table in the large dining room, Monique Brandt spreads out documents about the new heat source. The annual invoice shows how the bill for district heating is calculated. On the one hand, there is the basic amount, which is payable even if the house is not heated or is only slightly heated. The Brandts, who live permanently in La Brévine, pay far more than this minimum amount. They pay 16.8 centimes per kilowatt-hour consumed. Their annual expense is thus slightly higher than what they used to pay for filling their oil tanks. But it's more complicated than that," says Brandt. A new oil heater would have cost about 30,000 francs for their house: an investment that would have had to be amortized over about 20 years.

However, district heating also requires an initial investment. In the case of the Brandt family, the connection to the network cost 8,640 francs and the installation 12,500 francs. This investment does not pay for itself over two decades, like oil heating, but over a longer period.

Creation of the wood-fired district heating cooperative

As an entrepreneur, Frédéric is one of the people behind the district heating project and president of the cooperative that built the heating network, the Société coopérative de chauffage à distance au bois de La Brévine. In 2009, the municipality was looking for a solution to replace the old oil-fired heating in several public buildings. At the same time, the village's cheese factory was also planning to modernize. After a survey revealed that many private individuals were also considering renovating their heating systems, it was clear that La Brévine had the potential for a heat network. A huge boiler burns 4,000 cubic meters of wood chips per year. A visit to the "Siberia of Switzerland" shows how the heat then reaches the households.

Oil was no longer an option

According to Frédéric Cabré, if the vast majority of houses are now connected to the network, it is both out of idealism and common sense. In addition, the municipality and its 623 inhabitants are aware of current ecological issues and therefore knew that they would soon have to replace their old heating systems. But oil was no longer an option. On the one hand, because the village is built right above a water table, and it is therefore necessary to prevent any oil tank accident to protect the drinking water. On the other hand, since the energy law came into force, old oil heaters cannot be replaced by new ones in the canton of Neuchâtel.

Local wood

When you see the huge tree trunks - mainly fir trees - piled up in front of the thermal power plant, you can immediately guess the fuel used. There is enough for several months of heating. This poor quality wood is processed into chips on site. The cooperative has undertaken to collect it from within a radius of no more than 15 kilometers. The 300,000 liters of fuel oil brought to the village year after year did not contribute to the local economy. On the other hand, district heating has created 1.8 jobs here.