“Operator Tennet warns of transmission-highway toll”

Grid operator Tennet, one of Germany’s four major electricity network companies, has warned that a toll on power transmission from Germany’s windy north to industrial centres in the south could create substantial obstacles for the country’s planned transmission highways SuedLink and SuedOstLink, news agency dpa reports in an article carried by Handelsblatt. Tennet board member Lex Hartmann said the toll, which has been called for by the Bavarian Farmer’s Association (BBV), would generate recurring costs for power consumers, and therefore could call the project’s acceptance into question, the article says. Tennet said its expenditure on grid intervention during the first four months of 2017 was 50 percent higher than in the same period last year, and this figure is likely to further increase as the regional imbalance in Germany’s power supply will be aggravated by the country’s nuclear exit in 2022.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and Germany’s power grid for background.