“Federal states quarrel about power grid costs”

Germany’s federal states continue to disagree on the planned reform of the country’s electricity grid fee structure, writes Klaus Stratmann in Handelsblatt. It follows economy minister Sigmar Gabriel’s backtracking on plans to standardise fees across the country. State economy minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Garrelt Duin welcomes the current draft, while energy transition minister of Schleswig-Holstein Robert Habeck told Handelsblatt: “Small-state mentality kills the Energiewende.”
Consumers in rural areas with strong renewables development currently pay higher fees, as the grid must be expanded there to transmit more wind power to Germany’s industrial west and south. Additionally, measures by grid operators to ensure the stability of a power grid coping with more volatile renewable power are growing more frequent. This is the case mostly in eastern and northern German states.

Read the article in German here.

For background read the CLEW factsheet Re-dispatch costs in the German power grid and the CLEW dossier The energy transition and Germany’s power grid.