Avoid blackout: relieve the power grid on public holidays

The advisory experts

Avoid blackouts: Consumers should act

The feed -in of renewable energies and the low electricity consumption on public holidays increase the risk of blackouts. Experts recommend measures to stabilize the power grid.

Many experts assume that there could be blackouts in the summer months and especially on the holidays. Among other things, the reasons include the increased feed-in of renewable energies through smaller PV systems. This can lead to network -critical situations (blackouts/brownouts) on the holidays when the energy -consuming machines of the industry stand up and therefore not as much energy is consumed as usual. Because private households and the industry who work on public holidays do not require as much energy as is available on the network. As a result, the Federal Council passed the “Solarspitzen law”.

The content of the “Solarspitzen law” is, among other things, that PV systems should be equipped with a tax box. The network operators can access this interface. In network -critical situations, the network operators could then switch off the small power generators or prevent their network feed -in.

However, the “Solar Spitzen Act” must be approved by the Bundestag on February 14th. Then it can come into force on March 1, 2025. Consumers therefore had almost seven weeks to implement the measures – i.e. install a tax box. However, this could be problematic due to regulatory and technical hurdles. Because these factors are the reason why the smart meter rollout is only slow.

Another measure with which the risk of a blackout can be reduced is the memory expansion. According to Fraunhofer Institute ISE, the home storage segment (up to 30 kWh of storage capacity) made around 83 percent of the total installed storage capacity in Germany at the end of 2023. “At least 13 percent are eliminated on large storage (larger 1 MWh storage capacity).” Since the numbers are already one year old, it should be significantly more. However, the capacity is still not sufficient to prevent network -critical situations. And the owner of PV systems by Easter to oblige to buy an additional power storage is not possible. Accordingly, as a possible, preventive measure remains primarily that PV system owners do not feed their solar power obtained on the holidays on the public power grid, but consume it itself. Or?

Not quite. The engineering scientist Andreas Schmitz proposes another way on his YouTube channel to avoid overload: You can avoid higher network utilization, for example by using memory that are available in the distribution network (low-voltage network). For example, in peak times, i.e. if there is a lot of electricity from renewable energies, they could store excess electricity. Among other things, he advises to use electric cars for this. The procedure behind it is called bidirectional shop. You can find details here.

Schmitz reports: “It is assumed that the 100 GWh is capacity.” However, he also admits that this high storage capacity is not usable at the same time. After all, some e-car owners are on the go. As a result, the vehicle battery could not be used as an additional memory. “Or if the electric car is not plugged in.” Nevertheless, the vehicles could help advance the network expansion.