On the 7-10th of April 2014 the project partners meeting was organized in Pieniezno, Poland. It was the 4th meeting regarding the EU Life Long Learning Program’s Leonardo da Vinci Partnership project “Green Pearls” (No. LLP-LdV-PRF-2012-LT-0382). During this meeting the representatives from each organization were introduced with situation in Pieniezno and surroundings.
The very first visit was to the local heating plant which produces energy using the dried wooden chips. The plant produces the heating and the hot water for the locals. Everyone had a possibility to get into the plat and look how it works from close. As participants noticed, the plant is very much similar to one the Austrian partners have in Gussing (which was presented during the meeting in Gussing). The difference is the humidity of chips Polish use – it is much dryer then Austrian ones. All around the town there are fields of trees growing there for biomass chips to make. After cutting the trees down everything is brought to warehouses for drying. Drying process takes the whole 2 years and after that the wood is chopped to wooden chips. The town like the idea of this renewing energy so every year more and more habitants connects to the heating system.
The the second place the visit was to 2 health centers using renewing energy. One of it uses the biomass wooden chips for heating, another one – the day center for disables – uses the sun energy for their needs in the center.
All participants had a meeting with representatives in small village Lechowo. The village is special because a small group of persons are very enthusiastic about working all together in the village and have great plans to renew the village. They have represented their vision to use a sun energy in each house and already made the project for this. They are planning to buy photo-elements to each roof of the village and become a green village.
The last object to visits was the electric water plant in Pieniezno. It is built on the river and uses running water to produce the electric energy for the town. It was build around 1914, but because of the wars it started to work only in 50s. It has 2 generators and uses both only in high season when the river has enough water for running the plant in the maximum power. Other times when the water level is low, the plant only uses 1 generator.
Without the professional visits the participants had a possibility to visit the seashore town Frombork which is known of its cathedral with stereo organs and the history of N. Kopernik who lived and worked in this town and was buried in the cathedral. Participants were lucky to have a organs concert held by the famous organ master.
To sum up the visit was very useful as long as it was the 4th visit and participants already seen a lot of green pearls examples in other countries and could compare the practice in different countries. The whole meeting was very good organized by Polish partners (the accommodation, transportation, visits) and Polish partners were always around to help if needed.
Lithuanian team
