The energy crisis has made the unimaginable possible. But that a Bavarian mayor could sit in the dark in the town hall has not been there before. And who would ever have worried about whether there would be electricity in schools and kindergartens? This is exactly what Unterschleißheim was threatened with: Five weeks before the end of the year, the city was without an electricity supplier for 2023. Mayor Christoph Böck (SPD) solved the problem on Thursday with a short e-mail and agreed a contract for the coming year with the Oberhaching municipal works.
As in 1453, the city had previously participated in a bundled tender brokered by the Bavarian Municipal Council. Like Unterschleißheim, more than 550 participants went away empty-handed due to the difficult market situation – with the not entirely unrealistic scenario in mind of being without an electricity supplier on January 1, 2023.
Of course there are safety nets so that no one is left hanging in the middle of winter. The local default supplier accepts private individuals, and in the worst case, companies are supplied with electricity at high prices, at least for a limited time, according to the rules of the replacement supply. In which category municipalities belong, which with all their public facilities belong to the large consumers, is legally disputed and has not been an issue so far. Until there were problems concluding new contracts for the years from 2023 to 2025 using the bundled tender that had proven its worth in the past. This failed in many cases, says Katrin Anders from the company Kubus GmbH, because a number of electricity suppliers dropped out of the process as bidders. On October 7th, the company that took over the tender informed all the municipalities that were affected.
Half an hour to accept the offer
The ball was back in the town halls – and so was Unterschleißheim. There, lawyers were consulted to clarify whether a return to basic care would be a solution. A possible follow-up contract with the previous supplier was also considered. According to the mayor of Unterschleißheim, hundreds of municipalities or special-purpose associations faced the same problem, but there is no patent solution. According to Böck, some municipalities have chosen the option of basic services. In Unterschleißheim, on the other hand, the town hall took matters into its own hands and used the procedure permitted by the emergency situation under public procurement law to enter into direct negotiations with utilities. However, the city administration had to write to several providers, and in the end they had two offers on the table: from the Dachau municipal utility and the Oberhaching municipal utility.
Mayor Böck described to the city council how everything went in tip-top fashion, where he said that after receiving the offers on Thursday afternoon, he had between half an hour and a maximum of one hour to accept the offers. He agreed to the somewhat cheaper offer from Oberhaching, even if it is worse for the city than the previous contract that was also in place with the local municipal utilities. According to the town hall, instead of 13.69 cents per kilowatt hour net, a good 40 cents are now due. The city has the same experience with electricity as many private individuals, says Böck.