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ENERGY

Expanding electric grid to cost €20 billion

Expanding Germany's electricity grid to cope with the country's planned exit from nuclear power will cost about €20 billion over the next decade, a network operator warned on Tuesday.

Expanding electric grid to cost €20 billion
Photo: DPA

The cost is included in a 10-year plan for developing the electricity network, Martin Fuchs, head of the operator Tennet, told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The plan was presented by Germany’s four high-voltage electricity operators – Tennet, Amprion, 50Hertz and TransnetBW – to Merkel during a visit to the headquarters of the sector’s regulator in the western city of Bonn.

Fuchs said about half of the total investment would go towards modernising the existing network while the rest would be spent on constructing 3,800 kilometres of new electricity lines, mostly high-voltage.

The network needs to be significantly beefed up to carry electricity generated by solar and wind power to replace, in part, nuclear power which Germany has decided to abandon by 2022.

“Without the expansion of the electricity network, progress on renewable energy won’t produce results,” the head of the network agency Jochen Homann told the same news conference.

Germany lacks, in particular, electricity cables running from the north to the south. While wind energy is essentially produced in the north, most of the demand comes from the more industrialised south and west.

Some players within the energy sector have been critical in recent weeks that the new network is being extended too slowly.

Merkel has made the so-called Energiewende, the term used to describe both the end of nuclear power and the promotion of renewable energy sources, one of her government’s priorities.

“The transition is feasible in the way we decided it a year ago,” Merkel insisted Tuesday, indirectly responding to those within her own conservative party who have questioned the timetable.

Berlin decided in March 2011 to permanently switch off Germany’s eight oldest nuclear reactors and to close by 2022 nine others currently online in the wake of Japan’s massive March 11 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

AFP/jcw

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BUSINESS

France’s EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

French energy giant EDF has unveiled net profit of €10billion and cut its massive debt by increasing nuclear production after problems forced some plants offline.

France's EDF hails €10billion profit, despite huge UK nuclear charge

EDF hailed an “exceptional” year after its loss of €17.9billion in 2022.

Sales slipped 2.6 percent to €139.7billion , but the group managed to slice debt by €10billion euros to €54.4billion.

EDF said however that it had booked a €12.9 billion depreciation linked to difficulties at its Hinkley Point nuclear plant in Britain.

The charge includes €11.2 billion for Hinkley Point assets and €1.7billion at its British subsidiary, EDF Energy, the group explained.

EDF announced last month a fresh delay and additional costs for the giant project hit by repeated cost overruns.

“The year was marked by many events, in particular by the recovery of production and the company’s mobilisation around production recovery,” CEO Luc Remont told reporters.

EDF put its strong showing down to a strong operational performance, notably a significant increase in nuclear generation in France at a time of historically high prices.

That followed a drop in nuclear output in France in 2022. The group had to deal with stress corrosion problems at some reactors while also facing government orders to limit price rises.

The French reactors last year produced around 320.4 TWh, in the upper range of expectations.

Nuclear production had slid back in 2022 to 279 TWh, its lowest level in three decades, because of the corrosion problems and maintenance changes after
the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hinkley Point C is one of a small number of European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) worldwide, an EDF-led design that has been plagued by cost overruns
running into billions of euros and years of construction delays.

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