Battery storage in Germany has a grid connection problem: far more projects want to connect than the grid can take, so Germany has scrapped first come, first served and moved to a maturity-based allocation scheme that rewards projects that are ready to build. But for 50Hertz and Germany's other transmission system operators, connecting BESS is only half the challenge. Merchant batteries could push grid congestion costs and grid fees up, or bring them down.

Wilhelm Kiewitt, Head of Energy Economics at 50Hertz, one of Germany's four transmission system operators, joins Ed Porter to explain how a grid operator sees the battery boom from the inside.

They cover:

Why Germany scrapped first come, first served for grid connections, and how the new maturity-based scheme scores projects on land, permits and finance instead of speed.
How 50Hertz went from a handful of transmission connection requests a year to more than 100, and why even the 14GW of batteries already holding grid reservations may not all get built.
Should batteries pay more towards wider grid upgrades? Why Wilhelm says no, and why data centres are a different case.
Dynamic grid fees or smaller bidding zones? Where Wilhelm and Ed disagree on the cleanest way to send batteries to where the grid needs them.
Could merchant batteries cut Germany's roughly 4 billion euros a year in congestion management costs, or push them up?

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Themen: Batteriespeicher, Netzanschluss, Reifegradverfahren, Netzentgelte, Engpassmanagement, 50Hertz

Battery Storage in Germany: A Grid Operator’s View - 50Hertz

Transmission

Battery Storage in Germany: A Grid Operator’s View - 50Hertz