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Mountain dew high voltage6/23/2023 ![]() ![]() This covers infrastructure costs, invoicing and metering and levies, including for combined heat and power ( CHP) plants, and the levy for interruptible loads, which is paid to large power consumers for them to be ready to reduce consumption in times of shortage, with a higher rate being paid should they in fact have to do this. Power suppliers must pay the TSOs a “ grid fee” for the use of their network, which is ultimately passed on to the consumer. It is their job to regulate the power supply, including balancing fluctuating power from renewables with more predictable conventional generation. In Germany, the maximum voltage transmission grid is owned by four transmission system operators (TSOs) - TenneT, 50Hertz, Amprion, and TransnetBW -, which are responsible for the operation, maintenance, and development of their respective sections of the grid. In response to public protests against overland powerlines and pylons, new legislation has given priority to underground cables, although this technology is more expensive to install and maintain. Currently, just 0.4 percent of the German transmission grid is laid below ground. The transmission grid is used to transport electricity over large distances, taking power from where it is produced to areas of demand, as well as exporting power abroad. Most of the power lines use alternating current, but the new transmission lines between northern and southern Germany, planned to be completed by 2025, will use the more efficient high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology. It transmits power with a maximum voltage of 220 kilovolts (kV) or 380 kV. ![]() The total length of Germany’s transmission grid is around 35,000 kilometres. Keeping the grid stable during times of high influx of variable renewables and organising the interaction between the transmission and distribution grids are among the challenges faced by Germany’s grid operators. The grid system, which was built to deliver electricity from large power stations (via the transmission network) to some large (industries) but mostly small consumers (households - via the distribution network) is being upended by hundreds of thousands of small renewables installations (over 1.7 million solar PV installations and over 29,000 onshore wind turbines), which are feeding into the distribution grid at lots of decentralised locations (see graph below). In 2020, renewable sources, mostly from biomass plants and volatile sources, such as wind and solar PV, covered over 45 percent of German power consumption. Germany is experiencing a continuous growth in renewable power generation, causing an upheaval in the traditional supply chain for electricity. ![]()
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