Germany spent over 4 billion euros last year stabilizing its transmission grid

Germany's costs for measures to stabilize its transmission grid rose to 4.2 billion euros last year, significantly exceeding the previous year's record. This was driven by higher costs for activating conventional power plants for redispatch, as well as an overall increase in the volume of measures. This is according to data from Germany's grid regulator (BNetzA).

The energy crisis and the resulting rise in electricity prices also affected German transmission system operators' costs of ensuring grid stability last year. Preliminary estimates put the cost of measures to stabilize the grid in 2022 at 4.25 billion euros, up 55% from the previous year. Costs therefore rose significantly for the second year in a row, after a 60% year-on-year increase in 2021.

These measures include curtailing generation from renewable energy sources (RES) and conventional power plants, increasing output from conventional power plants active in the market or held in the grid reserve (so-called redispatch), and so-called countertrading between individual bidding zones.

The rise in costs was mainly due to a sharp increase in electricity prices resulting from higher fuel prices (coal, gas and oil), as well as a greater volume of grid-stabilization measures. This rose by approximately 19% year on year last year, for the following reasons:

• Long periods of low water levels in the Rhine reduced the capacity to transport coal. This limited the operational readiness of several power plants in southern Germany. The unavailability of power plants in the south led to generally higher use of the transmission grid in the north-south direction, and thus to an additional need for redispatch.
• Low availability of nuclear power plants in France resulted in high electricity exports to France and increased grid loading in the east-west direction.
• The shutdown of the Gundremmingen C nuclear power plant at the end of 2021 led to heavy use of transmission lines in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in the east-west direction, and resulted in increased redispatch in the control area.
• Several storms in February 2022 and strong winds in April led to high output from wind power plants and contributed to increased grid loading.
• An increase in the reported volume of redispatch resulting from a change in how redispatch involving renewable energy sources and CHP facilities is reported (so-called redispatch 2.0).