TenneT gets EUR 450m loan to expand power grid in Bavaria

Transmission system operator (TSO) TenneT has received a EUR-450-million (USD 440m) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to upgrade the electricity grid in the northeast of Bavaria.

With the fresh capital, TenneT will build a 185-km (115 mi) power transmission corridor that will connect Redwitz in Upper Franconia and Schwandorf in the Upper Palatinate, southeast Germany, to raise grid capacity and enable the integration of more renewable energy.

The transmission section, called Ostbayernring, regularly reaches its capacity limits due to the increasing feed-in of green energy. In order to ensure the security of supply for the entire region, the transport capacity of the section must be significantly increased and the existing 380kV/220-kV systems will be expanded to two 380-kV systems.

The upgrade of the local grid is necessary to facilitate the transport of green power from the country's wind-swept north and the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the south where conventional power plants such as coal-fired and nuclear plants have been switched off.

With the project, which is part of the national grid expansion plan, TenneT expects to solve the existing bottleneck and cut grid management costs.

The power grid expansion in Bavaria is the third project for TenneT that gets financial support from the EIB -- the bank has already backed the connection of offshore wind farms to the grid as well as Nordlink which connects Norway and Germany across the North Sea. Overall, the TSO has received nine loans totalling EUR 2.1 billion from EIB until now.

(EUR 1 = USD 0.978)

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