Electricity supply interruptions in 2019
Jochen Homann: "Data collection showed best figures ever"
Date of issue 2020.10.22
The Bundesnetzagentur has today published figures on interruptions in the electricity supply in 2019.
"The electricity supply in Germany was again very reliable in 2019. We've seen the lowest outage times since we started collecting these data,"
said Jochen Homann, Bundesnetzagentur President, and added, "As in the past, the energy transition and the growth in distributed generation have not had any negative effects on the quality of supply."
The average interruption in supply per connected final consumer was 12.20 minutes, 1.71 minutes less than the previous year's average and the lowest outage time since the first publication in 2006.
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.
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDIEnWG) shows the average duration of unplanned interruptions to supply per connected final consumer and voltage level in a calendar year, not including those caused by force majeure.
For 2019, 859 network operators reported a total of 159,827 supply interruptions at low and medium-voltage level. The number of interruptions in supply is the lowest since the data collection began as well.
Impact of outages at medium-voltage level down again
There was a reduction in the impact of outage times in the distribution network for all unplanned interruptions, including causes in upstream medium-voltage networks or "atmospheric effects" such as storms, flooding and snow.
Figures for federal states and details of interruptions
As in the previous years, the SAIDIEnWG figures for each federal state and an anonymised list of the individual supply interruptions are published.
An overview of electricity supply interruptions is available on the Bundesnetzagentur's website at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SAIDI-Strom.