Gas supply Lübeck

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Typical gas lantern in Lübeck's old town

The local company Stadtwerke Lübeck is responsible for the Lübeck gas supply .

history

Gas supply was a local matter until the gas pipelines were built. The gas was produced from hard coal in local gas works by means of coal gasification . Valuable by-products ( coke , tar , ammonia , benzene and sulphate ) were produced during production, the sale of which generated additional income for the energy suppliers and thus accelerated the expansion of the gas supply and the availability of which accelerated the emergence and development of other industries. The first form of gas use was city ​​lighting . The town gas obtained from coal was therefore also called coal gas . When it came to converting energy to generate light, gas soon became a competitor thanks to the power supply , which almost completely displaced gas lighting in streets and houses. When it comes to converting energy into heat (for heating and cooking), coal and wood have always been competitors. It was not until much later that petroleum was added. When it comes to converting energy into power ( gas engines ), gas has always only played a marginal role.

The gas supply has many requirements. Technically, these are the development of industrial gas extraction, the development of gas lamps , gas storage and gas transport ( pipeline ). There must be a societal need, which for artificial light consists, among other things, in the increasing separation of working hours from daylight ( time ), which has been accelerated by industrialization . In addition, of course, the necessary capital and the political and legal framework (regulation, collection and enforcement of resident contributions and usage fees or charges, tolerance obligations of private property owners ) must be available.

Town gas until 1912

The first gasworks in Lübeck started operations in 1854 on Moislinger Straße at the current location of the main building of Stadtwerke Lübeck. Compared to other European and German cities, that is late. The pioneering role in Europe was played by Amsterdam , Brussels , Rotterdam (all 1812) and London (1814/1815). In Germany, Berlin , Hanover (both 1826), Dresden (1828) and Frankfurt am Main (1828/1829) had a gas supply. Hamburg's gas supply provided a special impetus for Lübeck in 1845. After considerable discussions, it was decided against a private gas supply and a city-owned gas supply. The pipelines were obtained from England. Only two years passed from the decision in 1852 to commissioning. Initially, the main purpose of the supply was gas lighting as street lighting . The gas lights replaced the unsatisfactory and expensive public lighting with candles and oil lamps. From the beginning, however, the theater and private houses were also supplied, the consumption of which quickly exceeded the public.

The prerequisites for supplying the suburbs had been created as early as 1865, but the street lighting in these suburbs had only been on continuously since 1878.

With the development of the so-called Auer light by Carl Auer von Welsbach in 1885 (introduced in Lübeck from 1898), in which the open gas flame was replaced by the incandescent mantle , which brought a greater and more uniform light output, the competitive situation compared to gas lighting improved Petroleum light and electric light again, so that the energy conversion from gas to lighting remained the driving force behind the expansion of the gas supply until the beginning of the 20th century, until the division of electricity for lighting and gas for heating prevailed.

The huge increase in demand for gas led to the construction of gas works II in Geniner Strasse on the site of the former Petriziegelei, which was put into operation in 1893/1894 and expanded in 1901/1903 and 1908/1909. (The Petriziegelerei, which belonged to St. Petri and St. Jakobi, had existed there since around 1650 after its relocation due to the expansion of the fortifications from the ramparts.) There was also an ammonia factory on the site of the gasworks, which is now also used economically after it had been diverted into the moat until 1872.

After the opening of Gaswerk II in Lübeck, the continued increase in gas consumption was increasingly driven by the need for heating. In 1891 there were just 14 cooking and heating gas customers, in 1895/1896 238.

In 1903, Germany's first gas pipeline to Travemünde was built (after a discovery by Günter Friege, the managing director of Energie und Wasser Lübeck) .

Coke oven gas from 1912 to 1969

The increasing gas consumption forced the Lübeck-based company, after initial resistance, to purchase coke oven gas from the Lübeck blast furnace in Herrenwyk , where it was a by-product. The coke oven gas had poorer calorific values ​​than the town gas that had been produced in the gas works until then. In addition, with the switch to coke oven gas, the gas works operator no longer had an additional source of income from by-products (such as coke). On the other hand, there was no need to invest in the further expansion of gas works II and the coke oven gas was cheaper, also taking into account the loss of additional income.

Until 1930, however, gas production in gas works I and II was maintained. By contract with the blast furnace plant from 1928, however, the transition to the exclusive supply of coke oven gas was decided. With the end of gas production, gas works I in Moislinger Allee was demolished and replaced by the new administration building (opened in 1931). The head office had previously been on Mengstrasse . Since then, the procurement, storage and distribution of gas for the urban area and the other connected supply areas has been and is controlled from the site of Gaswerk II.

In 1942 another gasometer (disk gas container) was put into operation in Karlshof, which was called Gaswerk III, although gas was never produced there. This gasometer had to be demolished in 1988.

The destruction caused by the Second World War initially led to a significant collapse in the gas supply. In the meantime, even the dismantling of the blast furnace plant in Herrenwyk was up for debate. The construction of the gasometer in Geniner Strasse in 1953/1954 is a sign of the rebuilding of the gas supply.

The growing gas consumption due to economic growth and the population growth in Lübeck due to the influx of displaced persons brought the gas supply through coke oven gas to capacity limits. After the discovery of the first natural gas field in the North Sea near Groningen and in north-west Germany, an economical alternative arose in natural gas that also no longer contained carbon monoxide and is therefore non-toxic and has a significantly higher calorific value. After an interim solution by adding liquefied petroleum gas to town gas (rich gas process), the gas supply was completely converted to natural gas by 1969, which meant a considerable logistical effort, as almost all devices (except for so-called all-gas devices) in households had to be converted to natural gas.

The conversion to natural gas, which had already been associated with a considerable reduction in coke oven gas consumption during the conversion phase since 1966, had considerable economic consequences for the blast furnace in Herrenwyk. The contract was terminated on March 31, 1969 with three years' notice in 1966. Because of the shortage of purchases during the conversion phase, the blast furnace plant brought legal proceedings before the district court in Lübeck, which ended in 1972 with a settlement after the blast furnace plant had to pay 5.5 million DM in damages.

Natural gas from 1967

In 1980/1981 the gas supply in Lübeck was switched from the low - calorific L quality (mean calorific value of 9.77 kilowatt hours per cubic meter) to the higher calorific H quality (mean calorific value of 11.86 kilowatt hours per cubic meter). This change was due to the fact that the supplies from the previous L-gas fields near Groningen and the Weser-Ems area reached their capacity limits. Since then, Lübeck's natural gas has been supplied from Norwegian natural gas fields as well as Algeria and the former Soviet Union.

See also

literature

  • Günter Friege and Ingo Sens: 150 years of gas supply in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck 1854 - 2004, publisher: Stadtwerke Lübeck GmbH, without ISBN.

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