To date, being at the forefront of the energy transition has been quite expensive. In precisely those areas that supplied the rest of the country with a particularly large amount of wind power, households paid particularly high amounts for the electricity. The reason: A lot of wind power also requires a lot of power lines, and the suppliers recovered the costs of expanding them – at least at the regional level – from local customers. Regions with fewer wind farms, on the other hand, benefited from both cheap wind power and comparatively low network fees. That should change.
The Federal Network Agency wants to introduce a new solidarity system for power lines. She presented the first plans for this on Friday. Accordingly, suppliers whose network areas have a particularly large number of green electricity systems connected should be relieved of costs. This burden should then be passed on nationwide to all electricity customers. “We want to achieve a fairer distribution of costs,” says Netzagentur boss Klaus Müller. After all, it is a community task. Since a change in the law last month, Müller has had significantly more powers, including for redistribution.
The Bonn authorities have already calculated which regions would be particularly relieved by their model. It is mainly, but not only, the north. In small Schleswig-Holstein alone, consumers would be relieved of 186 million euros. Brandenburg would receive 216 million euros – meaning that the two federal states would account for two thirds of the total relief of 608 million. Almost 90 million euros flowed to Saxony-Anhalt. However, even within countries, money only goes to particularly affected networks, and therefore mostly to rural areas. This means that Bavaria can also count on 40 million euros in relief. Here, too, there are regions that have a particularly large amount of green electricity connected, for example in the Allgäu. The city states and North Rhine-Westphalia come away empty-handed.
The redistribution, which would begin in 2025 at the earliest, is to be financed through an existing levy to compensate for different network costs. It would rise from a good 0.4 to 0.64 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s around seven euros a year for an average household. In the affected areas, however, customers could save a good 100 euros.