“Eastern Germany stuck with high electricity costs”

Federal economy minister Sigmar Gabriel is backtracking on plans to standardise electricity grid fees across the country, angering several state governments, writes Andreas Mihm in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). “If the economy ministry’s regulation draft is passed by the federal cabinet in its current form, the federation will break its promise,” Saxony’s state premier Stanislaw Tillich told the FAZ. If the fees were not standardised, the regulation would “lose its heart,” according to Tillich.
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. The federal cabinet is to approve the regulation this month.

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.