The grid operator Mitnetz temporarily curtailed the feed-in of renewable energy on 222 days last year due to an oversupply of electricity. The company reported that it intervened a total of 1,179 times to prevent overloading the lines.
This is a decrease: in 2024, there were still 1,277 interventions on 225 days. The grid area covers large parts of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and southern Brandenburg as well as smaller regions in Thuringia.
Such interventions become necessary when the sun is shining and there is a lot of wind, meaning that more electricity is produced than is consumed. Solar parks and wind turbines then have to be taken off the grid. According to the information provided, the operators receive compensation payments for this. In total, a good 192 gigawatt hours were "curtailed" in the area, as the grid operators call it.
Request: simplify grid expansion and promote battery storage
According to Mitnetz, the decreasing number of interventions is a result of the grid expansion. The company invested 565 million euros last year to increase the efficiency of the electricity grid. Mitnetz CEO Lutz Eckenroth called for approval procedures for grid expansion to be accelerated and simplified in order to further accelerate this.
He also advocated the targeted establishment of large electricity consumers such as industry, data centers and charging parks in order to permanently increase electricity sales in the region and make better use of the capacity of the systems installed in the region. "In addition, the expansion of feed-in systems as well as large battery storage systems should be promoted primarily in areas with free grid capacity."
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