The German Federal Grid Agency (regulator) is preparing the industry for a possible long-term power outage: the agency has developed a secret plan in the event of a power shortage. This was reported by the newspaper Die Welt.
According to the publication, industrial electricity consumers with an annual consumption of over 8 GWh will in future be obliged to register centrally in the new Energy Security Platform (SiPlaS) and in the event of an emergency will be obliged to provide a technical possibility to disconnect from the grid on its order. With this new tool, the Federal Grid Agency is preparing the country for the possibility of a so-called long-term power shortage. According to internal documents of the electricity transmission network operators, the regulator is thus preparing for the first time for power outages lasting “from several days to weeks“, the newspaper notes.
According to the document, in the event of an emergency, such enterprises will be obliged to reduce electricity consumption upon an order issued within three days to 24 hours. As is already common practice in the gas market, the Federal Agency for Electricity Networks in this case will take on the role of a federal body for balancing the load in the electricity sector, organizing the state distribution of the remaining available electricity quotas. A similar platform has existed on the gas market since 2023. Its creation was provoked by the sudden interruption of supplies from Russia, the most important gas supplier to Germany and the EU at that time.
The Federal Electricity Network Agency noted that SiPlaS is a “digital platform designed to improve communication and coordination in the event of an energy shortage“. The platform is being created “preventively, on behalf of the Federal Electricity Network Agency, starting in 2024, to ensure effective action in the event of an emergency“. At the moment, the regulator emphasized, there is no electricity shortage. “The electricity supply in Germany is extremely reliable and the Federal Network Agency continues to consider large-scale power outages to be extremely unlikely“, the regulator said.
The new regulatory instrument, as Die Welt points out, was probably developed in strict secrecy over a period of two years. There is no mention online of plans to create a security platform, nor of additional state powers to intervene in the electricity sector. The newspaper also notes that the document on the functioning of the Energy Security Platform states that publication is not planned because these plans could cause “public concern“.