District – Sunny times for the local energy transition?
In any case, the lecture series 'My Solar Project' by the Landsberg Energy Agency (LENA) was well received by the audience in the district.
In 22 communities, interested citizens asked many questions.
Only the Ammersee region remained cautious.
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Peter Koch, deputy chairman of LENA, is satisfied with the past two years of the solar campaign in the district: "Of the 31 municipalities, we ran into most of the open doors." Interest in an energy theme day was raised on site, later all municipalities were written to - sometimes several times.
After the initial phase, many community leaders independently approached LENA.
However, it is "a bit strange, but geographically remarkable" if certain places on the district map remain 'white'.
"Of the Ammersee communities, only Utting was interested - via a municipal council decision," regrets Koch.
At the beginning of March, one of the last evenings for the expansion of solar energy will take place here.
In the course of the two years, the initially pure information campaign changed into a "real consultation event".
Koch mentions some of the temporally related results: construction of a PV system on the kindergarten in Vilgertshofen or the planning of local heating networks in Prittriching, Igling and Vilgertshofen, partly supported by LENA Service GmbH.
The main goal, however, was to provide information about the advantages of a PV system on roofs;
and more than 1,000 district citizens listened to them. According to LENA, on average a good two percent of the respective population came to the information evenings in the individual towns.
"The leaders were Weil with 120 listeners (largest number of visitors) and Thaining with five percent of its population and 55 people."
The district sponsored the public awareness raising about solar energy with almost 20,000 euros.
“This paid for a working student and advertising.
But we didn't have to exhaust the budget completely.
We received a lot of organizational and personal support from the District Office.” LENA put around 700 volunteer hours into the lecture series, conservatively estimated.
At all events, the help from the communities was “excellent”, says Koch.
There was active support, both in printing and distributing the advertising flyers and in the process on site.
The deputy chairman sees "the close contact with the communities" as the greatest benefit for the future work of LENA. "We have all moved a little closer together."
The fact that the energy price trend last year pushed acceptance of a necessary energy transition was a welcome side effect.
The next thing to address is the issue of heat.
"Four times as much heat is consumed in private households as electricity." From May 2023 there will be a new campaign on this.
This time something more compact: around six events in the larger halls in the district for interested parties from a radius of 30 kilometers.
However, the topic is much more complex and almost more important.
Graduate engineer Koch emphasizes that the main focus here will be on the (theoretical) possibilities of insulation and the use of heat pumps and pellet heating systems.
"It's easy with photovoltaics, because the listener - well informed by us - can quickly move on to the planning, which almost always pays off.
But heating is one of those things, a lot of individuality is required and the cost-benefit calculation is a lot more difficult.”