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Electric fan heaters: According to local authorities, gas bottlenecks should not be used to compensate for them
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Frank Rumpenhorst / dpa
In the energy crisis, warnings are given against mass use of fan heaters in winter.
"Even with the very high gas prices, using fan heaters is more expensive than heating with gas," said the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, to the "Tagesspiegel".
"And if too many people heat with fan heaters at the same time, that can push the local power grids to their load limits and beyond."
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities had previously warned of overloading the power grids, "for example, if the 650,000 fan heaters sold this year go online, the gas supply should fail," as CEO Gerd Landsberg told the "Welt am Sonntag".
Hostile hacker attacks are also a realistic scenario.
"We can't rule out widespread power outages," he said.
Germany is insufficiently equipped for this eventuality.
However, experts believe that the German power grid is well prepared.
"The fear is largely scaremongering," said energy expert Christoph Maurer from the consulting firm Consentec to the television channel n-tv.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) also sees a high level of security of supply.
"Unlikely, but currently not completely ruled out"
A power grid stress test by the federal government recently came to the conclusion "that crisis situations in the power system by the hour in the winter of 22/23 are very unlikely, but cannot be completely ruled out at the moment".
It was about an extreme scenario in which a quarter to half of the gas-fired power plants in southern Germany fail due to a lack of gas, while persistent low water is slowing down supplies for coal-fired power plants, French nuclear power plants are still out of order and many fan heaters are used at the same time.
Energy expert Maurer said on Wednesday that a real blackout could never be completely ruled out.
"With a view to the coming autumn and winter, however, we don't have to worry about that primarily," he said.
If anything, it is more about the fact that certain cities or districts are planned to be taken off the grid for short periods of time.
Real blackouts, i.e. large-scale, long-term power failures, are usually not driven by the fact that there is not enough power in the system.
hba/dpa
