The winter can come. The German gas storage facilities reached a filling level of 100 percent on Sunday. The President of the Federal Network Agency was relieved, but called for further gas savings.
The German gas storage facilities are full. On Sunday morning, the filling levels reached the 100 percent mark, according to data from the gas storage association GIE, which was published on the Internet in the evening. According to previous information from the federal government, the amount stored corresponds roughly to the consumption of two to three average cold winter months.
The President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, expressed relief given the full gas storage facilities. “It’s good news that the storage facilities are now 100 percent full. We are much better prepared for the winter than we were last year,” Müller told the dpa news agency. But it is too early to give a complete all-clear. “We ask people to think carefully about how much consumption can be saved.” If you use gas sparingly, you can save a lot of money.
Legal target clearly exceeded
The gas storage facilities compensate for fluctuations in gas consumption and thus form a buffer system for the gas market. The levels usually decrease in winter and increase again after the end of the heating season. The legally enshrined storage targets also include the 95 percent mark, which should be achieved by November 1st.
The storage facilities across the EU are currently almost full. According to the GIE association, the filling level was almost 99.6 percent. According to the storage association Ines, the 100 percent mark corresponds to the capacity of gas storage facilities under normal conditions. If the gas cools, the volume decreases so that additional gas can be stored. In such a case, the fill level exceeds the 100 percent mark. Against this background, according to the GIE, a filling level of 100.03 percent was reported for Germany on Sunday morning.