“Congested electricity”

Robert Habeck, state Energiewende minister of Schleswig-Holstein, claims the federal government plans to limit wind power development in northern Germany due to lagging grid expansion by establishing “grid congestion zones”, while nuclear and coal-fired power plants could continue to feed excess power into the region’s electricity grids, writes Peter Burghardt in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). “While renewable energy development is limited, nuclear and coal-fired power plants are not only allowed to continue to produce power, but excess electricity can be passed on to nuclear power plants in the grid congestion zones,” said Habeck. German nuclear power plants each have a maximum amount of electricity they are allowed to produce until their shut-down, according to SZ. However, remaining quantities of power can be transferred to other nuclear power plants – also to the ones in the grid congestion zones. 

Read the article in German here.

Also read the CLEW article Wind development has to wait for grid expansion and the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out for background.