So when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, solar and wind energy may be nonexistent, but renewable energy can still be economically produced from the smelliest of sources. The more the stink, the greater the energy–Biogas energy. Local farmers use the waste their animals produce and send it into a biogas facility on their farm that produces electricity. They can also add corn and the fermentation substrate is then sprayed on the fields as fertilizer. This closed-loop system provides steady and sustainable energy to supplement the energy needs of larger but less predictable outputs from solar and wind sources.

Next Power Plants co-Founder, Hendrik Samisch networks over 1,000 renewable energy plants comprised of individual farms in Germany through a data grid and a bank of computers that make up a powerful virtual power plant that trades annually over $100 million euros of electricity in biogas energy.

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