Commentary on the Berlin power outage: Is everyone awake now?

Contents

It begins with a fundamental question: What is the state responsible for? What can and must citizens rely on? The answer to this is often complicated in many specific situations. However, if there is a common denominator that most people can agree on, it is the role as a guarantor of survival. The state must ensure that people can live freely, safely, and self-determined lives. It must guarantee what is necessary. A necessary prerequisite: that critical infrastructure functions. In its most basic form, this means electricity, water, and wastewater. If just one of these three elements fails, many other prerequisites for normal life become impossible.

The good news: the power supply has finally been restored, including for the last 22,000 of Berlin's 50,000 affected households. The bad news: many consequences will only become apparent now. And what the state, as the guarantor of necessary supply, achieved was definitely not a shining example. The companies involved, some of them state-owned, also face many questions.

But it's also about fundamental issues: How open, how secret must important supply lines be? The obvious answer for some actors: Infrastructure data should only be released precisely upon proven, legitimate interest. Sounds logical at first. However, precisely the cases where this or another Vulkan group – how many there are, is not yet known – is said to have struck, are examples of how little sense this makes: Substations, the transition from power pylons to underground cables, or even the crossing of Berlin's numerous waterways and railway lines cannot be completely secured. What politicians use as an excuse these days is therefore strikingly accurate: There can be no absolute security.

Redundancy and Resilience

Which is why redundancy and resilience are important. That a single point of failure without a separately maintained, redundant connection is not a good basis for critical infrastructure should surprise no one in 2026. Of course, it is difficult to consider all eventualities. Because many things are considered critical today, which is correct in a way, due to dependencies. However, not everything is equally critical, as the Berlin example also shows.

The fact that district heating failed, for example, was not due to the district heating itself, but to the lack of electricity for the pumping stations. The same applied to the pumps for oil and gas heating: no operating power means no heat. With temperatures that did not rise above freezing for days, this meant houses cooling down, people freezing, and pipes freezing.

Owners of solar systems had to experience that their systems did not continue to run during a blackout: Many systems do not work without grid synchronization. Only island-capable systems, which can restart themselves after a shutdown without external help, could continue to operate. Users who had storage with emergency power outlets, such as small storage units for balcony power plants, also experienced some relief. However, with four days of power outage, the storage units, which are rarely well-filled in winter, likely only saved the contents of the refrigerator for many households.

That sewage and water pumps also only function to a limited extent without electricity should have also really dawned on some people now: No electricity is a fundamental problem.

Electricity is indispensable – and redundant connections are key to risk mitigation. Entire generations of interior politicians had books like "Blackout" decoratively on their shelves and could have known this. The incident in Brandenburg, which was intended to paralyze the Tesla plant, should also have been a warning. Among other things, an Edeka regional warehouse had to cease operations – because operations could no longer run without electricity. However, the conclusions drawn were, at best, mediocre. Yet the simplest conclusion is: No electricity = does not work. Electricity must be there.

No Connection Without Electricity

The next problem is currently being established: More and more systems depend on being digitally accessible. The desire for intelligent control requires a basic level of connectivity – as long as electricity is available for it. However, there was no talk of redundancy and resilience here either: Mobile network coverage also failed, only emergency power could be ensured. Because most masts have – if any – only small batteries. Even the landline largely failed.

How do people inform themselves then? Normally, there are crank radios and the like for this. But even that only worked partially – because the Schäferberg transmitter, which supplies Southwest Berlin and Potsdam with television and radio signals, also failed temporarily with the power outage. That a railway signal box between Berlin and Potsdam – apparently after the emergency power supply ran out – also temporarily failed and thus a line otherwise connected by the railway power system could no longer be used, was also a bad sign. But it was still undramatic enough for the company to learn from it now. That must be the great hope anyway, that the events will primarily lead to rapid learning.

Because the power outage in the southwest of the federal capital affected 50,000 households. While this is a large number of people, it is in a relatively manageable, densely populated, and easily accessible area. However, even under these relatively favorable conditions, it took several days until the problem was at least temporarily resolved. Many things worked, likely not least because people in crisis situations are often there for each other more than sometimes feared. There was no shortage of aid offers from all over the country.

However, it is apparent that those who should have navigated the crisis safely were not fully up to their tasks and underestimated the situation. Those who consider the events of this power outage to be a Berlin-specific issue are probably not entirely wrong. But that it would go better elsewhere is not guaranteed – consider, for example, the beginning of the Ahrtal crisis management. Therefore, it is to be hoped that not only Berlin will draw concrete lessons.

What if Russia were to attack? If hybrid attacks were carried out by disposable agents, recruited via classified ad portals and Telegram? While numerous solutions are already being presented and sold for defense capabilities, for missiles, tanks, aircraft, and conscription, little has happened in civil and population protection three years after Olaf Scholz's Zeitenwende speech.

There is much to do

Yes, fire departments have received new civil defense vehicles, and the THW (German Federal Agency for Technical Relief) was also able to draw on new possibilities for its relief efforts. However, in case of emergency, the THW could not be everywhere at once, the Bundeswehr would not be available for relief efforts, and the population would be more unsettled than it is today. When it comes to resilience, when it comes to redundancy, the Berlin example clearly shows: Far too little has been done.

This also has to do with how politics deals with the issue: crisis resilience is not a topic for beer tents and marketplaces. It costs money and is, at best, not needed. In the Bundestag, this is currently evident in the discussion about the Kritis umbrella law. This is intended to ensure better physical protection of critical infrastructures.

This is an important project in difficult times. However, there is a great danger that populism will be paved the way rather than sustainable and effective solutions, that more will be done against runway stickers than for actual redundancy and resilience. When the Association of German Rural Districts points out that the law should only oblige "critical entities" that supply more than 500,000 people to provide protection, then it is clear: we can hardly afford this – neither as a society nor economically. The economic damage caused by the days-long outage will be difficult to quantify. However, it will amount to many millions in any case.

If Germany's Zeitenwende politicians therefore genuinely mean greater resilience for the population, protecting them from war, hybrid, but also climate change-induced major damage events, then they are seriously addressing these tasks in 2026. Because who is to blame for the overall situation is obvious: all responsible parties of the past three decades. Blame assignment therefore helps little, because solutions for the future are much more important.

The federal Minister of the Interior, Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), who was hardly heard from during the Berlin power crisis, the Minister of Economics and Energy, Katherina Reiche (CDU), who also remained incommunicado, and for digital infrastructure resilience, Federal Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (also CDU), are fundamentally responsible for civil protection. They would have a lot to do if they wanted to tackle it seriously now – and if the citizens, not just in Berlin, do not quickly put this incident behind them. Until the next outage, which might be less benign. Currently, at least, there would be a basic understanding of the problem. Even if it costs.

(ds)