50Hertz invests €4.6 billion in expansion of transmission network

The eastern German transmission system operator 50Hertz is investing €4.6 billion in additional submarine and land cables over the next few years, awarding the largest contract in the company's history. Specifically, it involves framework agreements for the production and installation of 3500 kilometers of cables on land and in the North and Baltic Seas, with an option for 2700 more kilometers. This was announced by the company on Friday. The orders include a total of seven projects and go to the Danish company NKT and the Italian cable specialist Prysmian.

The new lines are needed to transport electricity, for example, from wind farms in the Baltic Sea to Germany, as well as for grid connections between Denmark and Germany. In turn, offshore grid connections are also to be built in the North Sea, as well as the high-voltage line for direct current between Pöschendorf in Schleswig-Holstein and Klein-Rogahn near Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on land. Another line is to be built between Klein-Rogahn and Wolmirstedt near Magdeburg.

"With these contracts, we are creating an important prerequisite so that Germany can achieve the goal of climate neutrality by 2045," said 50Hertz CEO Stefan Kapferer on Friday. However, he said, grid expansion was still in its infancy. The manager pleaded for the acceptance of the financing in the population on the way to more renewable energies. The costs would have to be financed finally foreseeable by the electricity customers against.

In the development of the so-called highest voltage net it concerns that new lines bring climaticneutrally produced river there, where it is needed - particularly from the north into the south. In the regions, electricity distribution networks with lower voltages then take over the energy supplied by the "electricity highways" and transmit it to the points of consumption. The four transmission system operators Amprion, TransnetBW, 50Hertz and Tennet take care of grid expansion in Germany.

50Hertz operates the electricity transmission grid in northern and eastern Germany. The 50Hertz network area includes the federal states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, as well as the city states of Berlin and Hamburg. Thus, the company is jointly responsible for the power supply of about 18 million people.