Energy: Tennet boss: More and more challenges for electricity network

The network operator Tennet sees increasing challenges for a safe power grid in Germany. “Security of care is not a sure-fire success. We have to do a lot for it,” said Tim Meyerjürgens, CEO of Tennet Germany, the German Press Agency.

“Germany operates one of the safest power grids worldwide today. This is a high commodity and extremely important for our business location,” emphasized Meyerjürgens. “But we have to act now so that it stays that way. I have no fear that the lights will run out tomorrow, but we now have to set the course so that we can still operate the network properly after 2030.”

Meyerjürgens’ statements come to the status of the energy transition before an soon and tension-expected report by Minister of Economic and Energy Katherina Reiche (CDU). Reiche had already made it clear to focus more on security and affordability in energy policy.

“Urgent decisions” for new power plants necessary

The Tennet boss emphasized the need for the construction of new gas power plants. If the coal phase -out should really be implemented in 2030 and 2038, replacement in the system is necessary for the secured performance. “We urgently need decisions.”

In the future, new gas power plants should step in as backups if the electricity requirement due to renewable energies cannot be covered – in “dark down” when no sun is shining and no wind blows. State funding has been planned for a long time, which is likely to cost billions. Reich wants to start the first tenders by the end of the year.

More and more interventions online

Meyerjürgens said that it is driving over how system security can be guaranteed in the long run. “This is becoming increasingly challenging. We have had to intervene in the power grid once or twice a year 20 years ago so that we keep the whole thing stable. Today we have around 2,500 interventions a year in our network area alone.” That is seven a day.

“This shows how challenging it has become to keep the energy system stable.” Compensation measures against bottlenecks in the power grid cost a lot of money, which ultimately loaded consumers via the network charges. “We therefore urgently need instruments on the hand with which we can continue to operate the power grid properly and safely in the future.”

The Tennet manager said: “We transport large amounts of electricity, often from north to south, because we have a lot of renewables in the north and the load in the south. You can imagine the power grid like a highway. It has a certain capacity. If you send too many cars on it, there is a traffic jam to resolve this” traffic jam Reduce and compensate for money.

In the case of solar systems, interventions are only possible to a limited extent because many small systems cannot be controlled directly. About half of the installed photovoltaics (PV) performance, about 50 to 60 gigawatts, cannot be regulated. “This at times exceeds our load requirements. Then system security can really come under pressure.” The Federal Government reacted at the beginning of the year and issued a law that sets down the threshold from which they must be taxable for new systems. That is extremely important.

“Overall, we have to put the system in the foreground,” said Meyerjürgens. This means that the performance of PV systems could be throttled for the purpose of system security.

“In the Netherlands there is, for example, a system where you can enact power customers parts of your network fee when the operators are ready to temporarily change the flow of performance of your facilities,” said the manager. “An incentive is set that the network customer allows flexibility that may not always be ideal for him, but he also gets a significant reward on the costs. We need such instruments to flexible. We need them with the storage, we need them on the generation page, but also on the load page.”