Danger of blackouts: everything that depends on electricity

If there were widespread power failures in winter, the damage would be enormous. Without electricity, no water flows, supermarkets and petrol stations would have to close. Is Germany prepared for this?

It only takes a few moments before white and yellow hoses are scattered all over the gray asphalt – and the provisional emergency power supply is up and running. The volunteer fire brigade is rehearsing the disaster response in Balingen in Baden-Württemberg. The handles are practiced. However, if there are major and long power outages in winter that last for days or even weeks, the volunteers would reach their limits.

“People often have the expectation that civil protection can help everyone immediately in the event of a power failure. That is certainly not the case,” says the Vice President of the State Fire Brigade Association, Stefan Hermann. If the power goes out in winter, the fire brigade could just take care of itself – but not the community around them.

Expert considers danger underestimated

The former Major of the Austrian Armed Forces and blackout expert Herbert Saurugg sees a concrete danger of widespread power failures in Germany and Europe this winter. “We’ve seen very different cumulative problems over the past few months and they’re likely to intensify over the next few weeks,” Saurugg said. The lack of gas, the possible sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, the problems with the nuclear power plants in France, but also the drought in various countries are putting a strain on the power grid. The danger of a large-scale power failure is underestimated, Saurugg warns in an interview tagesschau.de.

The competent Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK), on the other hand, emphasizes that Germany has a very secure power supply in principle. But “even if the security of supply is very high, a large-scale and long-lasting power failure cannot be completely ruled out”.

Cash registers and cooling systems would fail

A longer power failure could hit Germany hard: Without electricity, water often no longer comes out of the tap, supermarkets would have to close temporarily because freezers and cash register systems fail. According to the trade association, many shops in the food retail sector are equipped with emergency power generators, but these “are used for emergency power operation in emergencies and are not suitable for continuous operation”.

In addition, parts of public transport would come to a standstill, because Deutsche Bahn’s electrical power network, which is more than 7900 kilometers long, also depends on the public supplier. In addition, only a few filling stations have emergency generators. In the university town of Freiburg, for example, only six of 41 gas stations stated that they had an emergency power supply when asked by the local civil protection agency, which ensures that emergency vehicles can access petrol and diesel in an emergency.

“Many processes double and triple secured”

Clinic boss Jan Steffen Jürgensen in Stuttgart, on the other hand, feels well prepared for the approaching winter and possible power failures. “Many processes are protected twice or three times and only become serious if several systems fail at the same time,” says the chairman of the board of the Stuttgart Clinic. The hospital already produces a large part of its own electricity – with two gas-powered combined heat and power plants. So-called “bivalent burners” generate heat and can be operated with gas or oil. If that is not enough, the approximately 20 high-performance emergency generators kick in. In order to save electricity, in the event of a persistent failure, for example, there is no lighting in the administration area. Vital equipment, such as incubators for newborns, would continue to be supplied with the highest priority.

Gerald Gaß from the German Hospital Society emphasizes that it should be avoided as much as possible to postpone planned surgeries – as was the case recently during the pandemic – or to deregister entire areas. “Hospitals are expecting above all extremely rising energy costs, which can lead to numerous insolvencies. Together with the sharp rise in prices for medical products, services and much more, the energy prices in particular are leading to a financing gap of around five billion euros this year and ten billion euros next year at the hospitals,” says Gass. He calls for a short-term inflation compensation for clinics.

Too little investment in civil protection?

The equipment for civil protection and disaster control is also about money. Marion Meinert from Furtwangen University conducts research on the subject of security. She is surprised when she talks to him SWRpolitical magazine “Zur Sache Baden-Württemberg” above all how little money civil protection receives compared to the Bundeswehr: “Last year the budget of the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance made up only 0.3 percent of the Bundeswehr budget. After the 100 -billion upgrades of the Bundeswehr, this percentage is much lower,” says the professor.

The federal states therefore spoke out in favor of a ten billion euro subsidy pot from the federal government for civil protection last Friday in the Bundesrat. “The reductions in traffic lights are a catastrophe for civil protection,” criticizes Baden-Württemberg’s CDU Interior Minister Thomas Strobl. And how much is the country itself investing in civil protection? This year it should be around 8.8 million euros. Measured against the total budget of the State Ministry of the Interior, that makes up just 0.23 percent.

Blackout expert Saurugg also criticizes the fact that the federal and state governments have not invested enough money in civil protection in recent years. In addition, one urgently needs to work on the power grid itself, which lacks redundancies and reserves: “The fact that the infrastructure still works today is because our previous generations put in 100 percent reserves decades ago.” I’ve been resting on these reserves for too long.