No grid fees have to be paid for feeding electricity into the grid in Germany. The Bundesnetzagentur wants to change this and allow feeders to share in the grid costs in future, according to a discussion paper published today. The distribution of grid fees is to be reorganised in a newly opened procedure for the ‘General Framework Determination of Electricity’. A contribution could be levied either via feed-in-dependent fees or via a basic grid fee, which feeders would also have to pay. According to the Bundesnetzagentur, this would spread the costs across more shoulders. The introduction of new fee components such as a base price or a capacity price is also conceivable. Grid connection capacity plays a key role in grid dimensioning. According to the Federal Network Agency, this raises the question of whether direct pricing of the ordered grid connection capacity is appropriate.
We need to reform the system according to which grid fees are charged. Firstly, the number of users who pay the full amount of fees is constantly decreasing – while costs are rising at the same time. Secondly, we do not have sufficiently effective signals as to how and where plants can be operated cost-effectively in order to avoid unnecessarily expensive grid expansion. Thirdly, there are no incentives in the system today that reward flexible behaviour – quite the opposite,” says Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur.
In order to ensure that storage facilities are integrated in a way that benefits the grid and the system, the charges for the user group of storage facilities are addressed separately in the discussion paper.
The adaptation options should be discussed in an open-ended manner and in a continuous and close dialogue with all stakeholders.
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Procedure for determining the general grid fee system for electricity
Press release
