RWE Chief Markus Krebber Warns of Power Shortages in ‘Dark Flats’
“Prices rose extremely sharply to over 900 euros per megawatt hour on December 12, such fluctuations show supply shortages” said Krebber to the Rheinische Post. It was a day with little sunshine and hardly any wind.
“These dark flats are normal. We must better prepare, we need to build up networks, renewables, and storage and backup power plants faster” Krebber said. He does not expect blackouts, but rather further interventions by network operators: “I do not expect unplanned disconnections. The network operators have many means to prevent a blackout. There are reserve capacities and also the possibility for industrial consumers to take demand off the grid, to reduce the power consumption and stabilize the situation.”
The manager assumes that power prices will not rise further: “On the generation side, the further expansion of renewables and the introduction of a necessary capacity market will only have a slight cost impact. The key will be to limit the costs of network expansion and not always plan for the maximum. Currently, we see that the power demand is not growing as strongly and quickly as expected. It may then be possible to hold the overall costs stable” the RWE chief said further. “The goal must be to limit further increases, as we have already reached a high level.