It was a good four and a half years ago that the Bavarian Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters), announced in a press release the end of the extremely controversial new high-voltage line P44 from Schalkau in Thuringia to Grafenrheinfeld in Lower Franconia. The message was entitled “Big breakthrough for the energy transition in Bavaria”, and Aiwanger’s crucial sentence was: “It is a great success and relieves the burden on the citizens of northern Bavaria that we were able to negotiate away P44.” Now the high-voltage line is coming, albeit with a modified route and under the new name P540. Aiwanger has now announced this. “The Federal Network Agency is now planning ahead until 2045,” he says. “This changes the plans for the expansion of the electricity grid in Lower Franconia.”
The Energy Minister also stated that the Federal Network Agency had recognized the need for another electricity highway from northern Germany to Bavaria. There will also be a short branch from the southwest link from Schleswig-Holstein to Baden-Württemberg into the Lower Franconian separating field (Main-Spessart district). The electricity highway has an output of two gigawatts, which is roughly equivalent to the output of two nuclear power plants. With the Südlink and the Südostlink, three electricity highways will be able to transport huge amounts of wind power from northern Germany to Bavaria.
The new P540 is particularly surprising. There has been no mention of the project so far. It’s different with the third electricity highway. Bavaria’s demands for this and the considerations for this had already become known in November 2023. The reason for the new electricity highway and P540 is of course the same: it is the Free State’s immense need for electricity and the state government’s understanding that this can only be secured through imports of wind power from northern and central Germany. Aiwanger has now obviously recognized this too. For many years he was one of the harshest critics of the electricity highways and other line projects in the Free State and rejected them well into his time as Economics and Energy Minister. He said in 2020: “My statement is, I don’t want any of these routes. We have to develop other decentralized energy systems and not lay these large power lines across Bavaria.”
It was only a year ago that Aiwanger committed to the Südostlink in the face of the energy crisis. And in November, the state government justified its call for a third electricity highway to the Free State with the words that “the electricity needs of Bavarian industry and for hydrogen production in Bavaria were underestimated.” Aiwanger had already pointed out to the network operators that the electricity requirements of companies in the southeastern Bavarian chemical triangle alone would increase from today’s 3.8 billion kilowatt hours per year to up to 17.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year as a result of the switch to climate-neutral production. This must be taken into account when expanding the network, the letter states.
For many years, Economics and Energy Minister Hubert Aiwanger was a declared opponent of the electricity highways to Bavaria.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
The exact route of the additional electricity highway and P540 has not yet been determined. So far only corridors have been identified. According to the Federal Network Agency, the electricity highway is five to ten kilometers wide and affects the districts of Bad Kissingen, Main-Spessart and Würzburg. Like the other electricity highways, the Southwest Link is also to be laid as an underground cable. A converter station must be built at its Bavarian endpoint in Streitfeld, which requires an area of five hectares. Like the former P44, the P540 will run from Schalkau in Thuringia to Grafenrheinfeld. However, not in a direct line, like the P44, but in a wide arc over Münnerstadt (Bad Kissingen district). A substation is planned there through which electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaic systems in the region will be fed into P540.