Electricity sup­ply in­ter­rup­tions in 2023

Klaus Müller: "German electricity supply remains very reliable"

Year of issue 2024
Date of issue 2024.11.11

The Bundesnetzagentur has today published figures on interruptions to the electricity supply in 2023. The non-availability of electricity averaged 12.8 minutes per final customer. In 2022 it had been 12.2 minutes. 

"The level of quality of Germany's electricity supply remains very high. This shows that we are making successful progress in the energy transition without impacting the security of supply," said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur.

Even when taking energy transition measures into account, the figures on interruptions to the electricity supply in 2023 do not reflect any negative trends in terms of long-term interruptions. The current figure is at the level of the 10-year average (interruption duration of 12.7 minutes per final customer). A comparison with neighbouring countries also shows that Germany's electricity grid remains one of Europe's most reliable.

Bundesnetzagentur collects supply interruption data

Operators of energy supply networks report to the Bundesnetzagentur each year detailing all the supply interruptions lasting longer than three minutes that have occurred in their networks. The reports state the time, duration, extent and cause of the interruptions.

For 2023, 852 network operators reported a total of 158,360 supply interruptions at low and medium-voltage level. There were about 1,155 more reports of interruptions than in the previous year.

The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDIEnWG), calculated by the Bundesnetzagentur, shows the average duration of unplanned interruptions to supply per connected final customer and voltage level in a calendar year, not including those caused by force majeure. Extreme weather events are considered force majeure and are not included in the calculation.

Figures for federal states and details of interruptions

An anonymised list of the individual supply interruptions has been published in addition to the SAIDIEnWG figures for each federal state.

An overview of electricity supply interruptions is available on the Bundesnetzagentur's website at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SAIDI-Strom.

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