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Created mostly in the interwar period, energy unions of municipalities range among the oldest intercommunal institutions in France. Regularly threatened with extinction, they have demonstrated a real capacity for resilience, finding, throughout their history, new fields of action to rebuild their position in the local institutional landscape. This article looks back at this trajectory, to show how, within a century, unions of municipalities have begun a double transformation. From very crumbled structures, they have concentrated on the scale of “départements”. From organizations focused on managing rural electrification, they have greatly diversified their field of intervention, making them now important players in the energy transition and in the infrastructural equipment of territories.