07/10/2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
At SWM, 1,000 employees will deal with the "regional energy turnaround" in the future. The city also wants to push the solar expansion.
"We have to do pioneering work, because much of what we will need tomorrow is not yet available today," says Karin Thelen, who since July 1 at Stadtwerke München (SWM) as managing director is responsible for the newly created area "regional energy transition". 1,000 employees are to be drawn together here, mainly from other SWM departments, to deal with the topics of climate and sustainability, municipal cooperation, planning and construction, decentralized generation and renewable energies/renewable heat, as well as new business.
SWM's goal of generating as much renewable energy in its own plants as is consumed in Munich by 2025 has been in place since 2008 and, according to the company, 90 percent of it has been achieved. "With our own department, we are intensifying our renewable energy expansion offensive," says Florian Bieberbach, CEO. "It was clear from the outset that we would achieve the big leaps in generation capacity primarily with the powerful offshore wind farms in the North Sea and Irish Sea and with our onshore wind farms in Germany and Europe. However, we want and need to use the potential in Munich and the region just as much to make the energy and heat turnaround a success."
Potential that the city of Munich itself also wants to leverage. The City Council's Committee for Climate and Environmental Protection has now adopted the Solar Munich Master Plan to advance the expansion of solar energy in the city center. According to the plan, it should be possible to cover around 25 percent of the city's electricity consumption with inner-city solar systems in the long term. To this end, in a transformation phase until 2030, the PV addition is to be increased at a growth rate of 40 percent to around 100 MW per year.
With a photovoltaic addition of around 10 MW, more PV capacity has already been added in Munich in 2023 than in each of the years 2020 and 2021, the city announced. If the addition continues in the second half of the year, the planned addition of 15 MW for 2023 will probably be significantly exceeded.
"The current PV expansion figures are impressive and almost entirely due to the commitment of private individuals," said Christine Kugler, officer for climate and environmental protection. For example, she said, well over 1,000 small-scale system operators have already installed balcony solar systems. Applications for municipal solar subsidies have been submitted for a further 2,000 balcony solar systems and almost 3,000 larger PV systems.
In addition to promoting the expansion of solar energy generation, the plan is also intended to take into account the growing demand for electricity and energy storage, for example for mobility and heat supply, and to be regularly reviewed, updated and further developed.
Author: Katia Meyer-Tien
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