Allgäu Overland Company

The Allgäu Überlandwerk is a regional German energy supply company whose service area extends to southern Swabia as well as to the neighboring Austrian Kleinwalsertal through its participation in the Kleinwalsertal energy supply. The company is headquartered in Kempten. The AÜW is the largest regional electricity provider in the Allgäu, serving approximately 94,000 private and business customers. In 2009, the AÜW delivered 1,055 million kWh of electricity. The majority of the electricity is purchased on the European exchanges; physically, most of the energy enters the grid area through adjacent upstream network operators via lines. Without external procurement, the AÜW generated about 73 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy in its own run-of-the-river hydroelectric plants in 2009.
The company was founded on January 1, 1920. The founding partners were Karl Böhm and the city of Kempten, represented by Mayor Otto Merkt. On June 11, 1929, the city of Kempten contributed its power plant to the company, and on January 1, 1938, the municipal gas works. As energy demand rapidly increased in the years following World War II, the Allgäu Überlandwerk revisited earlier considerations for the construction of a Rottachtal dam and planned a reservoir with an area of about 100 hectares for a peak load power plant. There was resistance from affected property owners and the neighboring municipalities of Moosbach and Petersthal, leading to the establishment of a protective association for those affected. Despite somewhat uncoordinated resistance, the AÜW oriented itself elsewhere and abandoned the reservoir project. In 1970, the electricity plant Wertach, which had existed since 1920 and had built the power plant at Grüntensee in 1960 and put it into operation in 1961, was taken over.

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