Power: power provider Tennet to raise prices to 80 percent of the TIME ONLINE

electricity customers have to adjust in the coming year to a higher bill. The electricity grid operator Tennet increased its prices for reasons having to do with the cost of the energy transition. “Our network charges will rise for the new year, to 80 percent,” said Tennet chief Urban Keussen to the Handelsblatt. The beats at the end of the electricity bill.

According to Keussens a Three-person household will have to pay around 30 Euro more in a year. “The main reason for the increase is that the network expansion comes as fast as the expansion of Renewables. We must be alert,” he told the newspaper.

The Expansion of the networks will be delayed for years by political disputes, long approval procedures and protests along the proposed routes. The Problem: Without a significant grid expansion the energy transition is not progressing, free land lines are in many places difficult to implement. Underground cables should help. Without the Expansion, it is difficult, from the sun and to get above all the wind power from the North around to the South. Because the electricity grid is unable to cope with the fluctuations, billion cost of countermeasures.

The largest share of the increase in network charges of Tennet stabilising emergency measures go on the account of such “power,” said Keussen. “Only five per cent are due to the network expansion.” The show that the many delays in the construction of new electricity networks are more expensive than the construction of new poles and wires.

In the summer of 2015, about such problems were massive: During a week long heat wave generated by solar photovoltaic systems in the North, solar power in Abundance, so that conventional power plants had to drive their performance, sometimes dramatically, in order to stabilize the network. For the compensation to the operator of the consumer to come on the network charges of your electricity bill. Over one billion euros for the bottleneck Management 2015 cost.

There are four operators of high voltage lines in Germany: Tennet, Amprion, 50Hertz and TransnetBW. You feed the majority of the electricity and distribute it over long distances. Add to this the 806 distribution system operators, including many public utilities.