
Giessen. The stork brings the children, or so they say. In the case of combined heat and power plants such as the one at the East substation in Giessen, it's clearer: a heavy-duty crane lifted the six-metre-long, 18-tonne "baby" into place at the end of last month. Christened UWE by the municipal utility's engineers, the energy-efficient small power plant is the second new combined heat and power plant in this class. SWG had already installed a plant on the site of the former US depot in 2010. A third is being planned. It is due to be installed in Gießen's Schlachthofstrasse before the end of this year.
Utilising energy twice
Following the delivery of the heavyweight offspring to the East substation at the end of Giessen in the direction of Rödgen, the SWG engineers now have to set up the "surroundings": Chimney, housing, supply and power lines and the like. Once this has been completed, the installation of this new combined heat and power plant will bring the municipal utilities one step closer to their ambitious goal of significantly expanding their energy generation capacities in the coming years. With the small and energy-saving power plants, SWG wants to make itself and its customers more independent in the long term.
"UWE" is already the second of a total of six planned combined heat and power plants that are to generate heat and electricity for SWG by the end of 2012. Both forms of energy will be generated in combined heat and power plants. Here, the primary energy used is always generated twice and therefore ultimately also in a particularly energy-saving and therefore climate-friendly manner. By 2020, the municipal utility aims to generate half of the green electricity it sells in Giessen itself in this way.