As of: February 26, 2024, 6:07 a.m
By: Sebastian Tauchnitz
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Press
Split
The generous funding programs of recent years have ensured that a wallbox for charging electric cars has now been installed in many of the district's garages.
© IMAGO/MARTIN BÄUML
Even if the switch to e-mobility is not happening nearly as quickly as the federal government would like, the charging infrastructure in the district is now far better than its reputation.
District
- It's the classic chicken-and-egg principle: If you ask the providers of charging solutions, more electric cars are needed for the investments to pay off.
If you ask drivers, they will only consider switching to an electric car - if at all - when there is a charging station with affordable prices on every corner.
In recent years, however, considerable efforts have been made to expand the charging infrastructure in the district.
And in fact, even in small towns like Eberfing, there are now charging stations where you can charge your car quickly and easily if necessary.
Researching the exact figures is made more difficult by the fact that there are two network operators in the Weilheim-Schongau district: Bayernwerk and Lechwerke.
As of July 1, 2023, a total of 174 public charging points were registered in the Bayernwerk area in the district, as press spokesman Michael Bartels reports.
Between January and July 2023 alone, 43 charging points were added.
Not all charging stations are the same
Not all charging stations are the same.
With a modern electric car and a modern fast charging station, it can take just over 20 minutes to charge the battery from 10 to 80 percent.
However, the same charging process takes several hours at a conventional charging station.
As of July 1, 2023, there were 130 normal and 44 fast charging points in Bayernwerk's area of responsibility.
There are also public charging points in the Lechwerke area.
A total of 51 public charging points were reported there at the end of 2023, writes press spokesman Ingo Butters.
Last year alone, 28 were added.
The Lechwerke themselves would operate 17 on their own, four of which are fast charging points.
However, fast charging stations are also necessary, especially along motorways, if you want to “refuel” as much range as possible as quickly as possible on long journeys.
An example of such fast charging points is the Tesla Supercharger location in the immediate vicinity of the A 95 at Urthaler Hof near Sindelsdorf.
Wallboxes were available for free
Many electric car drivers usually charge their vehicles at home anyway.
A few years ago there was a very lucrative federal funding program where you could install such a wallbox at home for almost nothing.
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Apparently many citizens took advantage of it.
As press spokesman Bartels reports, 790 private charging facilities have been registered with Bayernwerk.
Although it is actually mandatory that you report the installation of a wallbox to the network operator, in reality, according to Bayernwerk, not all people take it so seriously: “Statistically speaking, there are 1.25 charging points per registration,” says Bartels.
The bottom line is that there are 988 wallboxes in the Bayernwerk area.
There are also 401 private charging points at the Lechwerke in the Weilheim-Schongau district.
Last year alone, 75 new people were added there - even though the funding ran out long ago.
The same for both providers: The vast majority of wallboxes deliver a charging power of 11 kW, only a very small number can charge twice as fast.
This often has purely practical reasons.
Many electric car owners use electricity from their own PV system for charging.
And very few people have more than 11 kW on their roof.
In addition, only 11 kW charging points were supported at the time - also to avoid overloading the power grid.
“As of today, the power grid is stable”
The latter is repeatedly put forward by skeptics as an argument against switching to e-mobility.
However, the network operators give the all-clear on this issue: “As of today, the electricity network is stable.
Because there are currently around 200,000 electric cars in Bavaria, we do not see any restrictions on network stability,” writes Michael Bartels from Bayernwerk.
Analyzes have shown that in a local network with several hundred charging points, never more than 40 percent of them are charging at the same time.
The electricity consumption due to electromobility is distributed over different times of the day, “which is why we are not currently detecting any bottlenecks.
Nevertheless, we continue to invest new record budgets every year to expand the networks for the energy transition.”
Underground cables replace overhead lines near Wessobrunn and Seeshaupt
In 2023 alone, Bayernwerk spent around 40 million euros on network construction measures in the districts of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Starnberg, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen and the district of Weilheim-Schongau.
In the Weilheim-Schongau district, for example, the Bayernwerk
near Wessobrunn
is replacing the existing medium-voltage overhead line with underground cabling.
It was said that around 14 kilometers of overhead lines and numerous lattice masts could then be dismantled.
As part of this construction project, Bayernwerk is also pushing forward the digitalization of the networks and is deploying nine digital local network stations.
A similar measure is being
planned
in the municipal areas of Eberfing and Seeshaupt .
The Iffeldorf medium-voltage overhead line is being renewed and modernized here.
In the future, 17 kilometers of underground cables will replace twelve kilometers of overhead lines.
Following the cabling work, eight lattice tower stations and one tower transformer station can be dismantled.
“A network expansion in the existing electricity network has not yet been necessary in the district due to a lack of capacity for charging infrastructure,” writes Lechwerke spokesman Ingo Butters on this topic.
There is a simple reason for this: There is very strong local electricity generation from renewable energies
in the entire LEW distribution network area
.
In purely mathematical terms, a generation plant now feeds electricity from renewable energies into LEW's distribution network every 300 meters.
This makes them one of the network operators with the highest system density in Germany – in terms of number.
In order to be able to absorb and distribute the locally generated electricity, the Lechwerke has
significantly expanded the capacity of the power grid in recent years
.
Accordingly, there is currently sufficient capacity available to purchase electricity from charging stations.
“In the future, grid expansion will likely continue to be driven primarily by the increase in electricity generation from renewable energies (electricity feed-in),” Butters is certain.