Costs for grid stability in the German power grid have fallen significantly.
According to calculations by the Federal Ministry of Economics, as reported by the “Spiegel”, the costs for the past year were around 1.7 billion euros. This was only slightly above half of the previous year’s value of almost 3.3 billion euros.
The majority of the costs are due to so-called Redispatch measures. Here, power plants are reduced in output to prevent overloads in certain parts of the network, while other power plants are increased in output to stabilize the network as a whole. The decline was attributed to the ministry, among other things, to the expansion and higher utilization of the grids, as well as a changed situation in imports. Furthermore, the fuel prices had fallen compared to the previous year, and there had been hardly any extreme weather events.
A role must also have been played by the expansion of renewable energies, which, according to statements by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), accounted for almost 60 percent of German power in 2024. This has reduced the impact of price spikes in fossil energies on Redispatch costs. If the development continues, the power prices for end consumers could also fall: the grid operators directly pass on the costs for the grid stability measures to the usage charges.