RhönEnergie Fulda

RhönEnergie Fulda GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	2013
Seat	Fulda
management	Martin Heun, managing director, spokesman for the management; Arnt Meyer, managing director;
Number of employees	> 1,000
sales	661 million euros
Branch	power supply
Website	re-fd.de

The Rhon Fulda energy GmbH is a municipal utility companies in Fulda .

history

The company came into being in the summer of 2013 following resolutions by the Fulda district assembly , the Fulda city council assembly and the ÜWAG special purpose association assembly from the merger of Gas- und Wasserversorgung GmbH (GWV) Fulda with Überlandwerk Fulda AG . The result was a regional supplier that is active throughout Germany and offers around 300,000 people and numerous companies in the region electricity , natural gas and drinking water as well as a wide range of services from a single source. The responsible line networks in the region are around 8,000 kilometers long.

The company's shareholders are the city and district of Fulda, the district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg and the Thüga AG public utility network .

subsidiary company

RhönEnergie Efficiency + Service GmbH
RhönEnergie Erneuerbare GmbH
OsthessenNetz GmbH
Biothan GmbH
RhönEnergie Verkehrsservice GmbH
RhönEnergie Bus GmbH
VGF Verkehrsgesellschaft Region Fulda mbH
Bäder Betriebs GmbH
RhönEnergie Osthessen GmbH
RhönEnergie Beteiligungs GmbH

Operating areas

electricity

The Elektrizitätswerk Fulda AG was founded in 1912, and in 1919 the special purpose association Überlandwerk Fulda-Hünfeld-Schlüchtern emerged. The establishment also marks the beginning of power supply in the region. In 1939, 36,000 customers were supplied with electricity and the Überlandwerk Fulda Aktiengesellschaft (ÜWAG) was founded. The supply area and the number of customers rose steadily - in 1955, more than 100 million kilowatt hours were delivered per year for the first time. In the same year, the changeover to a uniform voltage in the distribution network of 220/380 volts in the entire supply area took place - an important prerequisite for safe and reliable electricity delivery in the region.

In 1975 the network control center in Petersberg was put into operation. From 1976, all substations could be remotely controlled from there. In 2004 a modern control center finally started its work, which is still responsible for the entire network area and is staffed around the clock.

The RhönEnergie Fulda line network for low and medium voltage is now over 6,000 kilometers, 98 percent of the low voltage network is underground.

natural gas

In the summer of 1862, the Fulda City Council decided to install gas street lighting. For this purpose, a gas works with a retort furnace was put into operation on the outskirts of the city in October 1863. Just one year later, 160 gas lamps and 800 private gas lamps were lit in Fulda.

Due to the strong demand, a second retort furnace was put into service in 1875. As in other cities, so-called town gas was produced from coal. A gasometer was built for storage in 1895/96. At the beginning of the First World War, the Fulda gasworks already had four modern chamber furnaces for gas generation as well as an ammonia factory and a coke crushing plant.

When electrical power arrived in Fulda in the early 20th century, gas sales here shifted from lighting to household use (cooking, baking, hot water and heating) in the years that followed. During the Second World War, the gasometer and the town gas pipe network were badly damaged. After the end of the war, reconstruction began, and in 1954 Fulda had its own medium-pressure network and a spherical high-pressure gas tank completed.

In 1963, on the 100th anniversary of the gasworks, Stadtwerke Fulda became shareholders of Gas-Union Frankfurt / Main and soon afterwards was connected to the gas network. So from now on you could do without self-generation. When the city was connected to the supraregional natural gas network in 1970, this energy source was now available for the first time in unlimited quantities. In the years that followed, the number of private and commercial natural gas users in Fulda and East Hesse increased continuously.

Drinking water

Until the late 19th century, the residents of Fulda supplied themselves with water from public wells. The construction of a water network began in 1889 with the development of a source area in the nearby Rhön that is still rich today and the construction of a 20 km long water transport pipeline, which was put into service in 1891. The Rhön water flowed under its own power to the Frauenberg in the heart of the city, fed an elevated tank and from there was fed to the households. In 1892 there were already 980 water house connections in Fulda, the number of which increased rapidly in the following years.

In 1926 and 1927 two more elevated tanks were built in the area of the city of Fulda and in 1932 a first groundwater pumping station was built in the Fulda floodplain near the city center. This meant that the growing city had well water in addition to the Rhön water. A booster pump station in Fulda-Neuenberg, inaugurated in 1936, provided the necessary pressure.

In 1955/56 and between 1976 and 1984 numerous new wells were drilled in the west of the city. A large waterworks was built on the outskirts of the city in 1958 to treat the well water. In 1976, Gas and Water Supply Fulda (GWV) acquired the water supply systems for the Eichenzell community, and in 1980 for the Ebersburg community.

Today RhönEnergie Fulda supplies a total of 80,000 people with drinking water in the city of Fulda and in the communities of Ebersburg and Eichenzell. About a fifth of this still comes from springs in the Rhön, the rest from deep wells. The company has a total of 30 wells (21 in the west of the city), 10 waterworks, 21 elevated tanks and a pipe network of around 850 kilometers in length.

District heating

In May 1962 the foundation stone for the district heating supply in Fulda was laid. Two years later, the first district heating power plant started supply. In the meantime, the company operates several heating plants in the Fulda urban region, in which heat is reliably generated by gas boilers, as well as electricity and heat from combined heat and power plants (CHP). The primary energy for this is natural gas. The users receive heating water free of charge via a pipe network and then use it either for heating or for domestic water heating. The supplied buildings do not need an additional own heat generator.

The company's largest district heating plant is located in Fulda Ziehers-Nord and supplies almost an entire district, including several schools, sports facilities and the Ziehers-Nord sports pool. The buildings of the former US facility “Downs Barracks” (Haimbacher Straße heating plant), the Johannesberg housing estate project and a residential complex of the non-profit housing cooperative eG Fulda on Waldschlösschen are supplied with heat.

Broadband

Since 2011, the RhönEnergie Fulda has been building a broadband infrastructure using fiber optics in the Fulda district. It started in the communities of Dietershausen and Dipperz, and they have had fast fiber optic connections since June 2012. In 2012, contracts for the expansion were signed with two other municipalities - Flieden and Hofbieber. In the same year construction work started there.

In May 2013 the district council decided that the rest of the district should also be supplied with fiber optics by RhönEnergie Fulda. At the end of the year, other districts (Silges, Rimmels) could already be connected to the fast Internet.

Pool operation

The subsidiary Bäder Betriebs GmbH is responsible for the public swimming pools in Fulda - Sportbad Ziehers, Freibad Rosenau, Stadtbad Esperanto - and takes care of their operation.

Before the Bäder Betriebs GmbH was founded in 1998, the city of Fulda operated both the Rosenau outdoor pool and the Ziehers sports pool. The Zentralbad, located in the center of Fulda, belonged to the Zweckverband Hallenbad Fulda, which was composed of members from the city of Fulda, the district of Fulda and the district of Hünfeld. Up until this point in time, each bathroom had its own staff. Only for the Rosenau outdoor pool were personnel recruited from the indoor pools in the summer months. In order to enable new synergies and to optimize the use of personnel, the pool staff of the city of Fulda and the special purpose association Hallenbad Fulda were transferred to the new Bäder Betriebs GmbH in 1998. The Bäder Betriebs GmbH was founded as a 100 percent subsidiary of Gas- und Wasserversorgung Fulda GmbH (GWV) and has been a 100 percent subsidiary of RhönEnergie Fulda since the merger of ÜWAG and GWV in 2013. The Ziehers sports pool became the property of Gas- und Wasserversorgung Fulda GmbH on January 1, 1999, and the Rosenau outdoor pool on January 1, 2005. The Bäder Betriebs GmbH was commissioned to manage the two.

The central bath was closed in 2005 and later demolished. The Fulda indoor swimming pool association was dissolved in 2005. In the same year, the new Esperanto municipal swimming pool was opened. The Bäder Betriebs GmbH was also entrusted with the management of the pool.

Over the years, the Bäder Betriebs GmbH expanded its range of activities and took over the management of several municipal pools in the region:

Since April 1, 2007 management of the Ehrenberg-Wüstensachsen outdoor pool
Since April 1, 2007 management of Steinau-Ulmbach outdoor pool
Since April 1, 2008 management of the Steinau an der Straße swimming pool
Since April 1, 2009 operational management of the Flieden-Landücken outdoor pool
Since April 1, 2009 management of the outdoor pool in Hosenfeld
From March 1, 2011 to December 31, 2013 AquaFit Bad Hersfeld leisure pool
From March 1, 2011 to December 31, 2013 Geistal Bad Hersfeld outdoor pool

Customer center

The customer center of RhönEnergie Fulda is located in downtown Fulda (Löherstraße 52). In addition to information about energy and mobility, the customer center is available to charitable and non-profit organizations and associations as a gallery, showroom and event room.

Power generation

For many years RhönEnergie Fulda has been developing concepts for expanding sustainable energy generation and implementing them. Wind power, solar energy, landfill or biogas - there are projects within the group of companies for all these forms of regenerative generation: the solar parks in Großenlüder and Kalbach, the "Wind Partnership East Hesse", the biogas plants in Eichenzell-Rothemann and Hauneck-Bodes, the landfill gas CHP in Kalbach and the biothane plant on the Finkenberg in Großenlüder.

traffic

RhönEnergie Fulda operates 213 buses and 10.4 million timetable kilometers annually for bus traffic in the entire district of Fulda, in parts of the district of Hersfeld-Rotenburg (including the Bad Hersfeld city bus ) and in parts of the Main-Kinzig district (Bergwinkel around Schlüchtern ).