BERLIN, July 2 (Xinhua) -- The German power grid was overloaded several times in June as electricity demand was much higher than production, the transmission system operators (TSOs) announced on Tuesday.
"The situation was very tense and could only be mastered with the support of the European partners," said the four German grid operators Amprion, Tennet, 50Herz and TransnetBW.
On three days in June, the average demand for balancing energy in Germany, which helps make up for unforeseen power fluctuations, amounted to 6 gigawatts or roughly five nuclear power plants, according to the German TSOs.
Additional electricity had to be acquired from other European countries in order to prevent a shutdown of the German electricity grid, TSO added.
As a consequence of the turbulences, which affected the entire European electricity grid, TSO doubled the balancing energy reserve to 2 gigawatts on Saturday.
The four German TSOs have "decided to procure significantly more balancing power to maintain security of supply," Martin Lienert, managing partner of r2b energy consulting, told Xinhua on Tuesday.
"An unfavorable adjustment of the auction design" in these markets in October 2018 could currently be regarded as a "major cause for this development," Lienert added.
Germany's Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) already announced to approve a concept for a new auction design that is following Brussel's Guideline on Electricity Balancing by the end of 2019. The German TSOs will have 12 months to implement the new rules.
On Saturday, the doubling of the reserve led to price spikes on the energy market. The price for one megawatt hour of balancing energy shot up to almost 40,000 euros (45,200 U.S. dollars), the highest amount ever. One megawatt hour normally costs around ten euros.
After doubling the reserve, the four German TSOs incurred a total cost of around 17 million euros for balancing energy on Saturday alone.
"Now electricity customers are facing exorbitant additional costs," warned Ingrid Nestle, spokesperson on the energy industry for the German Green Party.
"Under no circumstances should the impression be created that renewable energies are to blame for the distortions. This is clearly a matter of inadequate regulation and political misdirection," Nestle noted.
The TSOs said the reasons for the strong imbalance between generation and consumption in the German power grid were "not yet clearly clarified" because market data would only be available after several weeks.
