Electricity licence for a further 20 years

The town of Homberg (Ohm) is once again awarding the electricity licence in its Deckenbach district to Stadtwerke Gießen.

Just under 350 people currently live in Deckenbach, one of the southern districts of Homberg (Ohm). Stadtwerke Gießen (SWG) has always held the concession to operate the electricity grid in this small town - in all other districts, this task is carried out by another company. SWG prevailed against this competitor in a process that lasted around two and a half years. "Asserting ourselves as a concessionaire is always a great success," said a delighted Andreas Hergaß, Commercial Director of SWG, at the signing of the concession agreement at the head office in Giessen's Lahnstrasse. He added: "The size of the village doesn't matter to us at all. We approach every bidding process with the same level of commitment."

Getting to the heart of the matter

One special feature of the process did have to do with size: "The town of Homberg requested an informative letter of application of no more than 150 pages," recalls Matthias Funk. This request, expressed for the first time, presented those responsible at SWG and especially at its network subsidiary Mittelhessen Netz GmbH (MIT.N) with a real challenge. This is because the number of issues that need to be dealt with as part of an application for an electricity licence is largely independent of the length of the grid and the number of house connections. In fact, the important aspects for local authorities are security of supply, cost-effectiveness, consumer friendliness, efficiency and environmental compatibility - in short, complex issues. "It wasn't easy to summarise our range of services in this way," says Matthias Funk.

Proven partnership

"SWG's offer fully convinced us after being reviewed and evaluated by an external consultancy," explains Mayor Simke Ried. SWG's offer was characterised by the fact that SWG has been listening very carefully for many years and fulfilling the wishes of the municipalities within the scope of what is legally possible. "Approaching each other is becoming increasingly important in view of the necessary transformation of the energy supply," Andreas Hergaß is convinced. This can be explained very well using the example of the energy transition: it is already foreseeable today that the operator of the electricity grid - in this case MIT.N - will have to make various adjustments and expansions to the existing infrastructure. This is inevitably associated with construction work, which sometimes leads to restrictions in everyday life - for example, when new cables have to be laid in the street. "This requires the smoothest possible cooperation between the municipality and us. After all, the better we coordinate, the fewer the restrictions caused by construction work, for example," Matthias Funk points out.

With the conclusion of the new concession agreement, a concession for the electricity grid in Deckenbach that has already existed for more than a hundred years will be continued. "Our cooperation with SWG is seamless here," Simke Ried summarises, adding: "We firmly believe that nothing will change and that we will continue to cooperate as well as before for the next 20 years."