Unique offer: VOL-compliant online tendering for the public sector from KUBUS and enPORTAL.

Public-law institutions such as municipalities are bound by special legal regulations, even if they want to purchase energy or change energy suppliers. Since 2009, they have been able to issue the necessary public invitations to tender for electricity and gas in accordance with the VOL (Vergabe- und Vertragsordnung für Lieferungen und Leistungen - Regulation on the Awarding of Contracts for Supplies and Services) throughout the country and Europe via the unique web tool enPORTAL Public online, fast and legally secure. In order to provide the public sector with a unique offer for its energy procurement, enPORTAL, the pioneer for online energy purchasing from Hamburg, and KUBUS Kommunalberatung und Service GmbH (Schwerin) have been working closely together since 2009. As a company of municipal umbrella organisations, KUBUS uses enPORTAL's electricity and gas procurement platform by way of a licence. In 2013, for example, savings of around 21 million euros per year were secured in a tender conducted in Bavaria by 1,500 municipalities until 2016.

Great opportunity for energy purchasing by the public sector

Since enPORTAL has expanded its web tool to include the special requirements under public law and is the only provider to have been certified since 2009, municipalities can tender online via enPORTAL and thus save up to 40 percent in costs. All they need is a PC, internet access and a chip card reader. KUBUS is a company of municipal umbrella organisations and the contact for municipalities that want to procure public goods, such as fire engines, copiers or even electricity and gas. KUBUS and enPORTAL have been working together for five years to make energy purchasing for municipalities transparent, simple and secure. The most recent success: a bundled tender in 2013, in which 1,500 Bavarian municipalities with 40,000 purchase points purchased an electricity quota of 719 gigawatt hours of annual volume for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016. The participating municipalities were able to save about 21 million euros annually as a result - extrapolated over three years, this amounts to a reduction of about 63 million euros. "Our joint offer with KUBUS can help municipalities reduce their energy costs by up to 40 percent. At a time when municipal budgets are often strained, enPORTAL and KUBUS offer a simple and effective tool to save costs," says Rainer Otto, Managing Director of enPORTAL.

Municipalities receive competition and a transparent overview

Before online tendering, changing an energy supplier was a time-consuming process for municipalities, so old contracts often continued with high costs. For exchange-traded products such as electricity and gas, which are subject to extreme price fluctuations, the old, public-law tendering procedure with extremely long procedural and binding periods always led to high prices because the suppliers had to factor in price changes during the long periods. Often there was only one offer at the end of this complex process. "We are pleased that with KUBUS we can ensure maximum competition and the best electricity price at the time of the tender. We already manage 2 terawatt hours (TWh) of public electricity consumption, which is about 4.3 percent of total public electricity consumption (46 TWh) and our share is growing considerably," said Clemens Graf von Wedel, Managing Director of enPORTAL. Public online tendering makes it possible to achieve prices in line with the market in a legally secure and competitive manner - the tenders carried out so far show savings of up to 1.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Further advantages: Since all energy data is available online at enPORTAL, the effort for municipalities and suppliers is also reduced to a minimum. Municipalities also receive a complete overview of their numerous consumption points and can use this data, for example, for energy-saving measures.

Unique selling proposition for public online tendering

Since 2009, electricity and gas requirements may also be put out to tender online in accordance with VOL (Vergabe- und Vertragsordnung für Lieferungen und Leistungen). enPORTAL is the only company operating throughout Germany to offer an electronic auction with an electronic signature in accordance with Section 101 (6) of the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB). The procedure is two-stage: In the first step, suppliers are qualified, which takes 40 days. The subsequent auction procedure usually takes four hours. Here, the suppliers who have qualified can bid for the tendered service in the auction. The supplier with the best offer is awarded the contract and subsequently supplies the municipalities with electricity and gas. The timing of the auction is determined by the municipality itself - depending on market developments, it can be started at short notice. "KUBUS takes care of the entire process, from setting up the delivery point to conducting the tender and awarding the contract," says Hans-Werner Reimers, Managing Director of KUBUS GmbH.

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