Germany electricity grid deficiencies leading to wasted power

DPA
Sun, January 28, 2024

Wind turbines rotate in a wind field at Hauke-Haien-Koog on the North Sea coast. Axel Heimken/dpa

Germany's North Sea wind turbines are unable to deliver all the power they could produce to where it is needed most in the south of the country, grid operator Tennet told dpa on Sunday.

Grid bottlenecks led to a decline in power transmitted to 19.24 terawatt-hours (TWh) over the course of 2023, some 9% down on the year. The figure is equivalent to demand from around 6 million households.

"Owing to the continuing numerous bottlenecks in the electrical grid on land, the [power from] large windfarms in the North Sea increasingly has to be scaled back," Tennet chief executive Tim Meyerjürgens said.

Another factor is that there are hardly any large conventional power stations in northern Germany that can reduce their output instead, he noted. "This affects not only the electricity feed-in quantities, but also hits price setting," Meyerjürgens said.

He called for greater urgency in expanding the grid, with the construction of major so-called "electricity highways."

Tennet put total onshore and offshore wind power generation at 148.97 TWh in 2023, up 26.18 TWh on the 2022 figure. Power generated on the North Sea fell back by some four percentage points to 13% of the total.

Baltic Sea wind turbines, which fall into the part of the grid operated by the company 50 Hertz, generated 4.17 TWh last year, 0.55 TWh more than in 2022.

North Sea windfarm potential output rose by 70 megawatts (MW) last year to 7,106 MW, with the highest feed-in of 6,491 MW recorded on April 1.

By contrast, Tennet's North Sea output off the Dutch coast saw potential output rise 3,220 MW to 5,622 MW, with 11.54 TWh transmitted over the year. The figure was 3.63 TWh more than in 2022, as the commissioning of grid connections and the increased number of wind turbines took effect.

German economists and companies in the sector predict that billions of euros will be needed over the years ahead to stabilize the grid. They point to delays in expanding the grid and lack of renewable generation in the south of the country where many major industries are based.

These factors demand costly "grid bottleneck management," they say.

While no figures are available for 2023 as a whole, the Federal Network Agency put costs for the first half at more than €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion). The figure for 2022 came in at €4.2 billion, caused in part by a rise in the natural gas price.

Tennet predicts that it will be 10 years before interventions – known as redispatching – to stabilize the grid can be cut to a minimum.

As a result of the imbalance between the north and the south of Germany, conventional power stations powered by fossil fuels in the south have to be used, producing power that is much more expensive than that produced by renewables in the north.

A Federal Network Agency spokesman said almost 3% of renewable power went to waste in 2022.

"While the costs for redispatching are expenditure that is lost and have no economic benefit, investment in power infrastructure will pay off over the long term," a Tennet spokeswoman said.