The German town that ran out of power
Apparently, not everyone can keep up with the pace of Germany's race to electrify everything from heating to cars.
Dear Reader,
This week marked a year since Germany switched off its last nuclear reactors.
That decision put the country on a somewhat lonely path towards a future without any of the tried-and-tested pillars of 20th century electricity production.
With coal power also to be switched off in the coming years, Germany believes it will be able to keep hold of its heavy industry, while simultaneously electrifying its transport and heating sectors - all on the back of renewable energy.
When Germany closed down its last three reactors last April, sceptics predicted a future of high electricity prices, volatile supply and higher carbon emissions as coal would have to pick up the slack when the wind doesn't blow.
This week though, Energy Minister Robert Habeck said that the doubters had been proven wrong.
“Supply is always secured 24 hours a day, every day, the whole year long,” Habeck insisted.
What's more, wholesale electricity prices have dropped by 40 percent, while electricity produced by coal-fired plants had dropped to the lowest level in decades, the Green party politician added.
The expansion of renewable capacity is "gathering speed"; Germany is "on course" to meet its emissions reduction targets; the energy crisis has been "worked through" - these are the positive vibes being spread by the charismatic Mr Habeck as he seeks to put the tumult of the past two years behind him.
And they have been a rocky couple of years.
Last year the public revolted against Habeck's plans to ban gas heating installments and replace them with heat pumps. Still though, he managed to push through a bill that made electric-powered heat pumps mandatory in new builds.
German industry has sounded like a broken record in its constant complaints about uncompetitive electricity prices. Without swift change, production will migrate abroad, they ceaselessly say.
For simple reasons of political survival, it is understandable that Habeck is trying to shift the political narrative. And, the fact that Germany came out of its first nuclear-free winter relatively unscathed was an opportunity he wasn’t going to miss.
But another news story that broke this week showed that Habeck is not out of the woods yet.
In a commuter town north of Berlin, the local utility supplier made an announcement that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.
“In order to keep the electricity grid in Oranienburg stable, we can no longer authorise new connections or power increases for household connections,” utility supplier Stadtwerke Oranienburg stated on its website.
Due to a rise in the use of heat pumps and an unexpected increase in new homes, the city electricity grid has been stretched to its limit, the utility supplier explained.
The freeze means that no new homes or businesses will be connected to the grid for the foreseeable future. Nor will any more heat pumps or electric vehicle charging points be connected to the grid.
Stadtwerke Oranienburg says that it tried a year ago to gain an increase in the amount of electricity it can access from the main high-voltage system from the regional grid operator, but hadn't had any luck.
So, it decided this week to invest €18 million in building its own substation to increase capacity. New customers will have to be patient though: that substation will go into operation at the end of 2026... if everything goes according to plan.
Is Oranienburg just a one off? The national grid operator, which is housed in Habeck's energy ministry, has blamed the debacle on a “planning failure” in the 40,000-inhabitant town and says it is “not aware of any comparable cases” elsewhere.
Others are less sure.
Michael Kruse, energy spokesman for the Free Democrats, another coalition partner, said that, unless Habeck slows down the pace of change to match the realities on the ground, “Oranienburg will just be the beginning" .
“We spend too much time on abstract discussions around how much additional renewable energy we need, but we aren’t discussing how much grid expansion we need and how to match it to supply,” Kruse told broadcaster ZDF.
Indeed, there is something madcap about Germany's approach to its Energiewende (energy transition) in recent years. Since Olaf Scholz’ government came to power there has been an explosion in the installation of solar panels: roofs, balconies, fields and roadsides are now plastered with PV.
But a network of some 800 operators is struggling to adapt the grid to meet the complex demands of a decentralised system in which mini power stations are sprouting out of the ground like fungi.
Bayerwerk, the regional grid operator in Bavaria, has said that it will need to double the number of its substations - crucial tools in regulating the fluctuations of renewable power - by the end of the decade. In Thuringia, local grid supplier TEAG built 75 new substations in 2022 alone.
Labour shortages and rising material costs are stalling the grid roll out and driving up the costs. Meanwhile, grid managers are having to placate the thousands of small-time energy tycoons who expect to directly start earning money and can’t understand why there might be times of the day when their energy isn’t needed.
On the demand side, the country's largest real estate company, Vonovia, has said they have been unable to connect large heat pumps meant to serve whole apartment blocks due to a lack of availability on the grid.
Operators of charging points for electric vehicles often have to wait for up to four years between applying for a grid connection and coming into operation. On current projections, Germany will hit its target of one million charging points in 2077, almost half a century too late.
Bottlenecks on the grid are one issue, concerns about stability of the system are another.
Listen to the Bundesnetzagentur and you will hear that the grid is still remarkably reliable. According to figures released for 2022, the average German home only had to put up with 12 minutes of power cuts in the year. That is one of the best records on the planet - and one that is getting better despite the renewable roll out.
The thing about this record though: it only includes power outages of three minutes or more. But manufacturing firms complain that they are having to cope with an increase in mini outages of less than a second.
In an alarm call that drew surprisingly little attention, Andrea Thoma-Böck, the CEO of a Bavarian metal refinement firm, told a talk show that her company had been hit by eleven such outages in the past year.
“Most people only notice a flicker in their lights, but it flips the fuses in our entire plant,” Thoma-Böck said on the nightly Lanz show. “When we ask why this is happening, we never get an answer,” she added.
“I have colleagues who have packed their bags,” she said, warning that companies no longer trusted the grid and had cut investments to a minimum.
Lest we forget, Germany is still at the beginning of this journey.
Habeck has set a target of half a million new heat pumps every year. These are to be fed by new solar installation equivalent to 45 football pitches every single day. Grid operators face the unenviable task of joining these miriad dots.
Switching off nuclear power may not have led the project to collapse, but it is unlikely to have made it any easier.
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Great article where you give a local angle on a big national issue.