Power outages in Germany continue to decline amid growing share of renewables
Clean Energy Wire
Germany’s energy transition and increasing share of decentralised generation capacity are having no negative effects on the quality of its power supply, according to the Federal Network Agency. The average interruption time per connected end consumer fell by 1.47 minutes in 2020 to 10.73 minutes, the lowest downtime to date since the agency began publishing figures in 2006. “The lowest downtime to date in 2019 was again undercut in 2020,” said Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) President Jochen Homann, who added the country’s power supply remained “very good.”
Energy supply network operators annually report to the Federal Network Agency all supply interruptions that last longer than three minutes. For 2020, 860 network operators reported a total of 162,224 supply interruptions in the low and medium voltage range. The number of fault reports increased by around 2,400 compared to 2019. Reports include the time, duration, extent and cause of supply interruptions. The agency determines its System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) from unplanned interruptions, reflecting the average supply interruption per connected end consumer and voltage level within a year. The agency publishes an overview of electricity supply interruptions on its website.
