The municipal company Hamburger Energienetze will no longer be issuing new connections for customers with particularly high electricity needs in the foreseeable future. There is currently a lack of capacity for this because the passages from the supra-regional network into the Hanseatic city's network are not sufficient for the significantly growing electricity demand, the so-called network connection points. The Berlin company 50Hertz is responsible for the supra-regional supply of Hamburg from the high-voltage network.
On Monday, the Hamburg energy networks will start the so-called “repartition process”. The company is allocating new connections starting with a power requirement of 1.5 megavolt amperes. This applies, for example, to systems in the basic industry such as metal production, but also data centers. “Until the transregional expansion has been carried out at the interfaces by the transmission system operator 50Hertz, no additional large connections with high power requirements can currently be allocated in the Hanseatic city,” said the Hamburg energy networks. "As soon as power reserves are available, these are distributed transparently and without discrimination among applicants for new connections and existing customers with requests for power increases. For this purpose, the available power is re-evaluated by the Hamburg energy networks every year."
The expansion of the power grid in Germany has been lagging behind the rapidly increasing demand for electricity for years. This will seriously disrupt the increasing electrification of most areas of life and the economy as a result of the energy transition. The steel industry, for example, requires significantly higher electricity output in the economy as it switches its processes away from the use of fossil fuels and towards hydrogen and electricity. The Salzgitter steelworks, for example, was connected to a newly built high-voltage line last week. In turn, electric vehicles are becoming more and more present in public and private mobility. When it comes to heating buildings, heat pumps powered by electricity are gradually replacing classic oil and gas heating.
The Hamburg energy networks emphasize that nothing will change for private electricity consumers, nor for commercial or industrial electricity customers with demand for new electricity connections and a power requirement of less than 1.5 megavolt amperes. Connections above 1.5 megavoltampere that have already been guaranteed would be implemented as agreed. As part of the “Fair Grid” process called “Fair Grid” by the Hamburg energy networks, companies providing public services, such as hospitals or energy suppliers, are given preferential treatment. Large electricity storage systems with a power requirement of more than 300 kilovolt amperes are also affected by the strict interpretation of the allocation.
The Hamburg economy is reacting to the situation with great concern. "The increased power grid bottlenecks are hindering the urgently needed development of Hamburg as a business location. Without large connections, no relevant data centers, storage facilities or industrial production can be established," said Malte Heyne to WELT, the general manager of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. “Many Hamburg industrial companies will not be able to electrify their production processes and sustainably exploit growth opportunities.” Now the federal government is "urgently asked to adapt the legal requirements. The transmission and distribution network operators need the regulatory framework in order to be able to better harmonize the increase in generation capacity with the network expansion and to defuse the situation as quickly as possible."
The business umbrella organization UVNord sees the situation similarly: "The situation is extremely difficult for the Hamburg economy, which is currently in the middle of transformation and struggling to be competitive. Planning security for projects to electrify the economy cannot be guaranteed for years," said Managing Director Michael Thomas Fröhlich to WELT. "Even if all local partners are working on a common solution, the failures of recent years in network expansion are clearly to the detriment of companies. Furthermore, the referendum's preference for climate neutrality is technically demonstrably reduced to absurdity."
The UVNord also sees the federal government as having a duty to take quick action against the existing bottlenecks in the network: "More investments must be made in the networks quickly. Especially in the north, we have almost an abundance of electricity, but we don't get it to consumers directly on their doorstep," says Fröhlich. “The north could really be a pioneer for an even more climate-friendly economy.”
The Environment and Energy Authority, led by Senator and Second Mayor Katharina Fegebank (Greens), is responsible for Hamburg's power grid. The economic authority led by the social democrat Melanie Leonhard, in turn, classifies the situation as a fundamental problem of the energy transition. "As an economic authority, we take the issue of limited connection capacities very seriously. Hamburg is not alone with this challenge: network operators in other cities and regions in Germany now also have to allocate scarce connection capacities through allocation procedures," the authority said upon request. "The Senate is also working intensively at the federal level to improve the legal framework and accelerate network expansion. We need simpler procedures and, above all, reliable schedules for the provision of additional capacities." Until then, according to the economic authority, “the existing capacities must be distributed transparently.” However, this does not replace further, rapid network expansion.
The Hamburg power grid is currently divided into three zones. The Hamburg energy networks want to divide the city area into a total of six zones by the 2040s and massively expand the capacity of the network connection points together with 50Hertz. The pressure is enormous. Electricity consumers with a total output of 1,800 megawatts are currently connected to the Hamburg grid. According to the Hamburg energy networks, the magnitude of the additional, power-intensive requests for new power connections already amounts to around 3,000 megawatts.
In the coming years, little will be done in a regular way to resolve the bottlenecks. “We will probably have the current situation until the beginning of the 2030s,” said Managing Director Michael Dammann, head of the asset management and network operations department at Hamburger Energienetze, in a conversation with the media. "We are currently not receiving any delivery dates for new transformers and no binding commitments from 50Hertz for the expansion of the network connection points. That is why we have to particularly protect our existing customers on the network with the repair process."
At the same time, Dammann and his co-managing director Peter Wolffram tried to avoid blaming 50Hertz. The transmission system operators would be under considerable pressure to expand the network in many places at the same time and, for example, to reconnect numerous wind and solar parks or large battery storage systems. At the same time, there are “false incentives” in today's electricity market organization: If a transmission system operator does not connect an offshore wind farm to the grid on time and as contractually agreed, he is threatened with a high contractual penalty, said Wolffram, who heads the company and customer department. However, in the event of delays in the construction of new network connection points in the urban medium-voltage networks, the transmission system operators do not have to fear such sanctions: “The federal government must urgently correct this unequal treatment,” said Wolffram.
The Hamburg energy networks are currently working on possible interim solutions. According to management, this includes the construction of a “provisional network connection point” by 50Hertz on an existing property owned by the Hamburger Energienetze in the southern, Harburg part of the Hamburg power network. A possible direct connection to the medium-voltage network of Schleswig-Holstein Netz (SH Netz) and also an integration of the transmission system operator Tennet, which covers most of northern Germany, with the exception of Hamburg, among others, are also being examined. However, connecting to other network operators is particularly technologically complex and difficult. From the perspective of Hamburg's energy networks, another possible solution could be for 50Hertz to temporarily release existing network reserves and then control these capacities for Hamburg directly from its control room in Berlin.
From a legal point of view, the Hamburg energy networks see themselves as being on the safe side with the start of the repartition process. A company that had filed a lawsuit against the ongoing allocation process for electricity connections in Berlin was unsuccessful at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court at the beginning of October. However, the written reasons for the judgment and thus also a possible application for an appeal are still pending.
Olaf Preuß is a business reporter for WELT and WELT AM SONNTAG for Hamburg and northern Germany. He has been reporting on the German and international energy industry for more than 30 years.
