The busy power grid in Oranienburg is making headlines. The Federal Network Agency is now considering the consequences. And local politicians report mismanagement.
Oranienburg - This week exactly what was supposed to be prevented by good planning and clear laws happened. The city of Oranienburg, north of Berlin, cannot issue any new electricity connections; the local electricity network has reached its capacity limits. In a message on the city's website, the reason for this is that electricity demand has "developed enormously", "faster than was predicted in the past". The Federal Network Agency called this “unacceptable”. It is actually the network operator's job to plan ahead and prevent exactly this situation in good time.
Head of the Federal Network Agency calls the power grid incident in Oranienburg “annoying”
The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, said in an interview with Die
Zeit
that his agency had “invested a lot of time” in the past few days to get an idea of the situation in Oranienburg. “It's less about a lack of capacity in the power grid, but rather we have a problem with a substation. The city's enormous growth has not been taken into account and plans have only now begun to plan an expanded substation - but it will not be completed until 2026. This is blatantly bad planning with serious consequences for electricity connections in new developments and commercial areas. The situation is annoying and unacceptable,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Müller also said that they are working on a short-term solution for Oranienburg so that the city does not have to put the brakes on until 2026 and new network connections will soon be possible. “For example, you could relieve the load on the substation with battery storage. This isn't a permanent solution, but one that could tide you over for some time. This requires sufficient battery storage, which we are currently clarifying.” But if there is no quick remedy, one will have to think about “supervisory consequences,” Müller continued.
Dispute in Oranienburg over electricity bottleneck: Who is responsible?
Meanwhile, many people beyond Oranienburg are wondering how such a planning error could have occurred. For the Federal Network Agency, it is first about solving the problem and less about playing a “blame game”, as Klaus Müller puts it. However, some local politicians see it differently. The Brandenburg Pirate Party, which is represented in both the Oberhavel district council and the Oranienburg city council, writes on its website that it had been known since 2017 that there would be capacity problems.
“As early as 2017, the higher-level network operator EDIS alerted the municipal utilities that the existing substation in Germendorfer Allee was approaching its performance limit and that additional capacities had to be registered. According to the current state of affairs, Alireza Assadi, the then and now fired municipal utility manager, did not respond to this despite repeated requests to ensure sufficient capacity for our city,” the statement says. “There is a suspicion that the necessary investments in the infrastructure were deliberately not made in order to increase profits for the municipal utilities.” When the current head of the Oranienburg municipal utilities, Peter Grabowsky, took office in 2023, he was “in a hurry” to do so ensured that a new substation was commissioned.
Committee of inquiry and lawsuit for damages against ex-municipal utility boss
According to the Pirate Party, the claim by the mayor, Alexander Laesicke, that electricity demand has developed faster than forecast is “simply incorrect”. Rather, this is a “problem with an announcement” that has been known since at least 2017.
There have been allegations of mismanagement against the former municipal utility boss, Alireza Assadi, for years. In Oranienburg there was even a committee of inquiry into his work. In March of this year, the city even announced that it would examine a claim for damages against the former managing director. The new dispute over the city's electricity supply is just the tip of the iceberg.