The Federal Agency for Networks in Germany announced that the country witnessed almost no interruptions in the supply of gas to customers last year.
“The supply of gas in Germany is safe,” said Klaus Mueller, head of the agency, noting that this was confirmed by the current value of the average interruptions to the supply of gas.
According to the agency’s data, gas wasn’t supplied to customers for an average of 1.52 minutes last year, as this value declined from its level in 2021, which amounted to 2.18 minutes.
The outage rate last year matched the long-term average of 1.54 minutes.
The regulator stated that the supply interruptions are mainly due to damage to gas lines during construction work.
It should be noted that since 2006 the Agency has been calculating the average supply interruption in minutes for each final consumer in Germany, based on the reports of all German gas network operators.
This calculation is limited to unscheduled outages only, including effects from third parties, malfunctions in the network operator’s area, interactions with other networks or any other malfunctions.
The calculation does not include interruption of supply caused by force majeure.
In same context, the Federal Federation of German Consumer Organizations strongly advised against installing new gas heating systems in homes or apartments, in light of the significant rise in prices.
“We can now only warn against installing gas heating systems,” Ramona Pope, president of the union, told the local Rheinische Post newspaper on Wednesday.
“Gas and oil prices will go up as the price of carbon dioxide for fossil fuels goes up year after year,” she added.
It’s worth noting that the German coalition government has been subjected to a series of disputes related to a controversial law, which aims to ban the installation of most oil and gas heating systems starting in 2024.
It’s estimated that half of the homes in Germany operate with gas, and the installation of heat pumps, which are better for the environment, is expensive. Extremely.
