Schwerin (dpa/mv) - According to Economics Minister Reinhard Meyer, investments in regional power grids should be allocated to all federal states, despite nationwide expansion targets for renewable energies. This will also apply after the so-called wind-on-shore law comes into force next year, the SPD politician told the German Press Agency. There is an acceptance problem for the further expansion of wind and solar power when electricity prices are particularly high where many systems are newly connected.
So far, the costs for the construction of power lines in the regional distribution grids have only been borne by the respective local consumers via the network charges, even if they do not use the additional electricity generated by the connected power plants.
The German Energy Agency is of the opinion that the nationwide expansion targets for wind energy will distribute the corresponding costs more evenly by 2032. "Federal states like Bavaria, in which the expansion of wind energy has so far only played a very minor role, will therefore have to get more involved than before," it said. The bottom line is that Meyer agrees with this analysis, but this will not be the case until 2032. "But we have to start at the beginning."
The Wind-on-Land Act, which will come into effect in spring 2023, specifies how many areas the individual federal states must designate for the construction of wind turbines by 2032. Depending on the geography, around two percent of the respective state area should be designated as wind suitability areas.
Most recently, the northern German non-city states had called for Germany to be divided into different electricity price zones at the expense of southern Germany. Sharp criticism came from Bavaria for this.
