Oktoberfest 2011: night views and energy costs

 

Only during Oktoberfest-time the second biggest Munich church St-Pauli offers interested visitors  (against a fee of 3 EUR) to climb up one of its towers. The view from there at the "Theresienwiese" and the huge beer tents is simply breathtaking...Yesterday I was pretty lucky and climb the almost 300 steps up and enjoyed a very colourful and magic view...

 

However once I was up there and saw all those attractions and lights I start wondering about the energy consumption. so today I checked somestatistics and found out that the famous Oktoberfest uses within 17 days as musch electricity as 1200 households for one  year. The 750 customers get the final product via 3 underground and 16 above the ground transformer stations, 43km of cables and 160 feeder stations, Very often the energy usage of the festival is compared to a town with 20.000 inhabitants!

 

Another curiosity is the fact that for some years, asthe festival was first held (1810) everything was working without current. Only in 1866 did Werner von Siemens find "das dynamoelektrische Prinzip" and developped afterwards the first electricity generator...