The feared crisis winter is imminent – and the industry is warning of sudden power cuts. So far, the power grid operators have been able to switch off the power to industrial companies according to orderly procedures in order to stabilize the grid. The regulation expired in July.
The cold season is here – and the industry is afraid of abrupt power cuts. Franziska Erdle, General Manager of the Metal Trade Association, shared this concern in an interview with “Welt am Sonntag”. The reason: Due to the ordinance on disconnectable loads, which was not extended by the traffic light, there is now no orderly procedure for properly shutting down the power grid in an emergency.
“The power supply is under stress and its stability is increasingly at risk – especially now in winter. Unfortunately, that’s not a surprise, it was to be feared,” criticizes Erdle. The fact that the ordinance on the shutdown of industrial loads has expired without replacement would worry the member companies. Her criticism: “We think it is wrong that the federal government knowingly gave the instrument out of hand.”
Background: The ordinance that let the traffic light expire this July was the basis for the contractual agreements between the electricity network operators and the industry. On this basis alone, the power to the industry has been turned off 61 times in the last two years to ensure grid stability, according to information from the Federation of German Industries. The traffic light allowed the regulation to expire because the EU Commission saw it as a distortion of competition.
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