Report on electricity supply security by the Federal Network Agency criticized

On Wednesday, the Federal Network Agency published its report "on the status and development of security of supply in the electricity sector" for the year 2025 with an outlook up to 2035. Initial criticism followed promptly from the German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar).

The President of the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), Klaus Müller, commented: "The electricity supply will continue to be secure in the future if additional controllable capacities are built. Our monitoring underlines the importance of the power plant strategy planned by the German government. The additional capacities required should be provided via a capacity mechanism. It is also important that more and more electricity consumers react flexibly to electricity prices."

The report looks at two scenarios, an ideal target scenario and one that assumes a delayed energy transition. They differ in terms of how much additional capacity needs to be added by 2035 through controllable power plants – in the first case, this is 22.4 [] gigawatts of capacity, in the second case 35.5 [] gigawatts. Targets for the expansion of wind energy and photovoltaic plants contribute to achieving the necessary flexibilization and limit the demand, writes the BNetzA in the report.

Flexibilization on the supply and demand side

Flexibilization also comes from consumers who can adjust their electricity consumption depending on price, such as electric cars, heat pumps or electrolysers. Industry is not exempt from this. The BNetzA also explicitly mentions storage facilities that are "available as controllable capacities in short periods of time". Missing capacities would have to be created by adding gas-fired power plants, for example. Nevertheless, the BNetzA recommends harnessing the potential for flexibility as quickly as possible. "This would avoid the need to build additional conventional power plants over and above the demand identified in the scenarios."

Infrastructure and market conditions must be created for this. The BNetzA calls for rapid grid expansion. Redispatch measures will remain necessary in the coming years.

BSW-Solar praises the fact that the report "clearly underlines the importance of a rapid expansion of solar and wind energy for achieving the climate targets and also for security of supply". However, the association is calling for a revision to better consider "the potential of battery storage for security of supply". "Otherwise, there is a risk of making expensive political mistakes to build fossil gas-fired power plants and jeopardize climate targets."

"While grid operators have already made commitments for many gigawatts of storage capacity today and there are connection requests in the three-digit gigawatt range nationwide, the report sticks to yesterday's figures and even assumes a dismantling of stationary battery storage systems, which is unrealistic," explains the Managing Director of BSW-Solar. The security of supply report systematically ignores large-scale storage systems and therefore does not provide a viable basis for political decisions. The association is calling on the German government to "now swiftly dismantle market barriers to the expansion of storage, as agreed in the coalition agreement".

(dmk)