Grid agency initiates fine proceedings after 2019 power grid strains

Germany’s Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has initiated fine proceedings against three electricity market participants on suspicion of market manipulation after power grid strains last year. The agency said in a press release that it had examined whether individual market participants deliberately sold electricity on the intraday market at very high prices without the intention of actually procuring or generating this electricity themselves. “After extensive evaluations of more than one hundred million trading and balancing group data for the three days in June 2019, there are indications in 21 trading situations that false or misleading signals were sent with regard to the supply of electricity through sales bids,” said BNetzA. 

The agency launched an investigation following a severe imbalance of supply and demand in the German power grid in June 2019. On several days, there was less electricity available than needed to keep the grid stable, and Germany had to rely on neighbouring countries to cope. As a reaction, BNetzA adopted provisions to strengthen supply security in December, and launched an investigation into whether power price speculation destabilised the country’s power grid. Production of intermittent green electricity has risen sharply over the last few years in Germany, and industry figures occasionally voice concern about the security of the power supply. So far, however, Germany has one of the highest levels of supply security internationally.