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Gas paradox in Germany: More electricity from the scarce commodity - because the neighbors need help

2022-08-19T08:00:50.465Z


Gas paradox in Germany: More electricity from the scarce commodity - because the neighbors need help Created: 08/19/2022, 09:53 By: Marcus Mäckler Don't save: power plants are converting more and more gas into electricity. © Wolfgang Maria Weber/Imago Gas is more expensive than ever. But while Germany is struggling to fill the storage facilities, natural gas will continue to be used to generat


Gas paradox in Germany: More electricity from the scarce commodity - because the neighbors need help

Created: 08/19/2022, 09:53

By: Marcus Mäckler

Don't save: power plants are converting more and more gas into electricity.

© Wolfgang Maria Weber/Imago

Gas is more expensive than ever.

But while Germany is struggling to fill the storage facilities, natural gas will continue to be used to generate electricity.

Particularly strong in July.

The reason: electricity exports abroad.

Munich – Contradictions are part of life, but every now and then you have to rub your eyes.

Russia is drastically reducing its gas supplies, German politicians are using dramatic rhetoric (“popular uprisings”, “gas triage”) in view of the impending shortage – and then this: In July, power plants in Germany generated significantly more electricity from gas than in the same month last year.

According to data from the Bundesnetzagentur’s Smard portal, it was 4036 gigawatt hours: a whopping 13.5 percent more than in July 2021.

As early as May of this year, electricity generation from gas was well above the figure for the same month last year, but in June it was just below it.

If you go even further back, to the year 2020, the picture is put into perspective somewhat: in all three months, more gas was generated then than today.

However, the Russians were still delivering reliably at that time.

And there was no question of a possible scarcity.


Nuclear power plants use gas to generate electricity: high delivery volumes to France

Generate electricity instead of saving gas.

The situation is paradoxical, but explainable.

According to the industry association Zukunft Gas, the reason for the significant increase is the sharp increase in electricity deliveries abroad.

Although Berlin has been exporting more electricity than it has imported for years, the quantities have recently increased.

According to the association, exports to France increased almost sixfold in the second quarter compared to the previous year.

For exports to Switzerland, the increase was more than sixfold.

"These amounts of electricity were partly produced and exported with gas-fired power plants," said a spokesman.


All of this is "not desirable from a gas point of view," said the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, recently to Markus Lanz.

But it has something to do with "neighborly solidarity".

Tobias Federico, Managing Director of the energy consulting agency Energy Brainpool, puts it a little more pragmatically: "The higher goal at the moment is to have a secure power supply throughout Europe and to avoid a blackout," he says in an interview with our newspaper.

The French, in particular, currently have a serious electricity problem.

The country is heavily dependent on nuclear power, which supplies around 70 percent of its electricity at normal times.

But at the moment she is a problem child.

"Half of the 56 French reactors are currently off the grid," says Federico.

Some of them have been shut down for maintenance, and corrosion damage to the cooling pipes was discovered in other systems, which now have to be repaired.

Also, the heat is a potential problem.

Actually, many nuclear power plants should no longer direct the heated cooling water into the rivers because they are already too warm.

In order not to have to switch off the reactors as well, France has increased the limit values.


Power bottleneck: Habeck contradicts Lindner on the nuclear power plant issue

How long the electricity bottleneck (and thus German exports) will continue is difficult to say.

The electricity supplier EDF wants to have three quarters of the nuclear power plants back on the grid from November, and then 90 percent from February 2023.

That's the optimistic plan.

However, EDF also warns of possible longer downtimes.


In theory, politics could intervene.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) recently asked Economics Minister Robert Habeck to stop electricity production from gas.

In addition to gas, there should be no electricity crisis, he said with regard to Germany and combined this with the demand that local nuclear power plants be left on the grid longer.

However, Habeck's house waved it off and warned that not using gas in the electricity sector would lead to blackouts.

All the same, despite gas-fired power generation, the storage tanks are on the right track.

The 75 percent target, originally planned for September, has already been achieved.

By November, the fill level should be 95 percent.

Netzagentur boss Müller has his doubts, but energy expert Federico says: “I am confident that we will achieve the goals despite everything.” (

mmä

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Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-08-19

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