Redispatch costs in Germany fell last year despite higher renewable curtailment

The volume of electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES) curtailed last year in Germany due to insufficient transmission grid capacity rose by 5 TWh to 19 TWh. However, thanks to lower wholesale electricity prices, the cost of so-called redispatch—which involves curtailing RES generation in one part of the grid and dispatching controllable generators in another—fell from EUR 4.2 billion in 2022 to EUR 3.1 billion.

Germany’s costs for measures to stabilise the transmission grid fell by more than a quarter last year to EUR 3.1 billion. This was despite a further 5 TWh increase in the volume of curtailed RES generation. The resulting 19 TWh of curtailed RES generation last year was equivalent to around 4% of Germany’s total annual electricity generation.

As the international news outlet Clean Energy Wire reported, the decline in the cost of stabilising the transmission grid was mainly due to lower wholesale electricity prices, since the controllable generators used for so-called redispatch generally supply the required electricity in another part of the grid at a price higher than the market price.

Curtailment of RES generation in Germany is the result of the slow expansion of the transmission grid compared with the growth in installed solar and wind capacity. The problem mainly affects wind farms in the north of the country and offshore wind farms, whose output German transmission system operators are unable to transmit to the main demand centres in the south during periods of high generation.

The first quarter of last year was particularly challenging, when a quarter of generation from German offshore wind farms had to be curtailed.