Over €16bn investment is needed in Germany’s distribution networks by 2030 to cope with increased generation capacity, according to a survey by the German federal network agency BNetzA.
The agency surveyed German network operators, which reported needs for 3252 expansion measures costing €16.05bn between 2020 and 2030.
BNetzA said that one-third of the measures relate to the high voltage level and correspond to a reported 10-year expansion requirement of €7.81bn.
It noted that since the planning time horizon decreases from high voltage to low voltage, no such long-term network expansion plan is usually drawn up for the lower grid levels.
BNetzA added that the figures are forecasts by the network operators and should therefore not be confused with actual, current investment activity.
Of the €16.05bn reported, only 8.8% are due to existing feed-in and/or consumption-related network bottlenecks, the agency said.
“The reported network expansion is therefore essentially not driven by existing network bottlenecks, but is based on forward-looking plans by the network operators that take potential future network bottlenecks into account,” BNetzA said.
The results of the survey in German can be found here.