United Electricity Works Westphalia
| United Electricity Works Westphalia (VEW) | |
|---|---|
| legal form | AG , GmbH (1925–1930) |
| founding | 1906 |
| resolution | 2000 |
| Reason for dissolution | fusion |
| Seat | Dortmund , Germany |
| Branch | power supply |
The United Electricity Works Westphalia (VEW) was a regional energy supplier in North Rhine-Westphalia based in Dortmund . In 2000 the merger with RWE took place .
history
In 1906 at the initiative of various rural and urban districts in Westphalia - especially the counties Bochum , Recklinghausen and Gelsenkirchen as well as the urban districts Bochum and Herne - with support from the mining company Hibernia and the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft , the power station Westphalia (EW) in the legal form of a joint stock company with Founded in Bochum. The aim was to stop the expansion of RWE AG, supported by Hugo Stinnes and August Thyssen , which various politicians such as Karl Gerstein and Felix von Merveldt perceived as threatening . The politicians were supported by the Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft under Walther Rathenau , as his AEG and other electrical companies also tried to strengthen their position in the high-growth energy and transport sector by putting pressure on RWE.
EW's first own power plant in 1908 was the Kruckel power plant initially planned by RWE , supplemented in 1911–1912 by the joint venture in Hattingen and in 1916 by the Gerstein plant in Stockum an der Lippe.
On January 1, 1925, EW took over the Kruckel power plant completely, acquired the Dortmunder und Verbands-Elektrizitätswerk GmbH and relocated the headquarters to Dortmund. At the same time, the name was changed to Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen (VEW) and the legal form of a GmbH was chosen.
The VEW were thus a regional energy supply company for electricity and gas (later also district heating and water) with exclusively municipal providers. By 1930, a total of 31 urban and rural districts in the administrative districts of Arnsberg, Münster, Minden and Osnabrück belonged to the supply area.
In the 1920s, the VEW had four large power plants for generating electricity from hard coal for public supply: the Dortmund power plant , the Hattingen joint venture , the Gerstein plant in Werne-Stockum and the Kruckel power plant. To supply the power plants with coal VEW own mines acquired: the coal mine Old Haase , the colliery God's blessing and mine Small windmill . The gas for the public supply originally came from municipal gas works and has also been obtained from coking plants via Ruhrgas AG since the late 1920s . In 1965, VEW began using natural gas in public supply. VEW generated electricity from its own nuclear power plants in the Lingen nuclear power plant (1968–1977), in the THTR high-temperature reactor in Hamm-Uentrop (1983–1989) and in the Emsland nuclear power plant (since 1988).
In 1930 VEW GmbH was converted into a stock corporation, in 1966 the company was partially privatized.
In 1990 VEW AG took over new business fields beyond the regional energy supply by merging the companies MEAG, Edelhoff (disposal) and Harpen AG (services) under one holding company VEW AG. The regional energy supply company has operated in this holding company since 1995 as VEW Energie AG. On January 1, 2000, Westfälische Ferngas-AG (WFG) was added as a further management company.
The merger with RWE in October 2000 meant the end of the company and VEW . At the ordinary general meeting, which took place in Dortmund on June 27, 2000, 99.9% of the shareholders approved the merger.
literature
- Rüdiger Liedtke: Who Owns the Republic? Frankfurt am Main 1993.
- Walther Lipken: Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen Aktiengesellschaft. Cologne 1930.
- VEW AG (Ed.): More than energy. The company history of VEW 1925–2000. Food 2000.
Web links
- Inventory overview of the files of the United Electricity Works of Westphalia archived in the RWE historical corporate archive on the Internet portal " Archive in NRW "
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the United Electricity Works Westphalia in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ VEW shareholders agree to merge with RWE. In: handelsblatt.com . Retrieved December 28, 2019 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 29 '31.3 " N , 7 ° 13' 1.9" E