Energy Industry Act

On 13 July 2005,  the new Energy Industry Act (EnWG) came into force. The purpose of the Act is, apart from ensuring safe and efficient supply  of the public with electricity and gas,  the creation of effective competition. The organisation responsible for this regulation of network access is the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), who also started their work on July 13.

 EnBW suggested including an incentive stipulation in the Act. After lengthy discussions within the industry and with the legislator, this stipulation was finally accepted. Within one year of publicising the Act,  the Federal Network Agency, being the responsible Regulatory Authority, will develop a model for an incentive stipulation of the German power network. In the interim period,  the network operators must have their charges pre-approved by the Federal Network Agency.

The core of the new EnWG is also the separation of network operation and power supply. The  joint connection and supply obligation, which existed until this point,  was thus divided into a connection obligation on the network side and into a base supply obligation on the supply side.