A government agency in Germany has announced a new scheme that will see power suppliers able to remotely limit home heating and electric car charging.
Germany’s Federal Network Agency, a government watchdog responsible for the regulation of electricity and gas in the country, has announced a new plan that will allow power grid operators to remotely limit the use of heat pumps and electric car chargers in Germany next winter without the user’s permission.
With the plans set to be put in place by January 2024, the measure has been described as a way of ensuring energy grid operators have the ability to artificially curb electricity demand should consumption outstrip supply.
According to a report on the new scheme penned by Die Welt, the plan has been drawn up in response to the German energy grid being put under more and more strain by an increasing number of electric car chargers and people using more ‘environmentally friendly’ but electricity-intense heat pumps in their homes.
Such an increased demand reportedly cannot be caught up to with increased supply, at least in the short term, meaning that authorities within the Federal Network Agency believe that remote consumption restrictions must be rolled out on certain devices.
As a result, the agency reportedly says that an “acceptance of necessary comfort restrictions” on the part of the general public is now required, with it to be mandated that heat pumps — often used to heat homes and hot water — as well as electric car chargers, become remotely controllable by energy grid operators.
While there is no suggestion as of now that such devices will ever be able to be remotely turned off completely, the Federal Network Agency aims to make it mandatory that such devices can be remotely limited to as low as 3.7 kilowatts to enable what has been euphemistically described as “peak smoothing”.
Such a limitation would cripple the effectiveness of many devices, with Die Welt saying that would make it take as long as three hours to charge an electric car enough for it to travel up to 50 kilometres (around 31 miles).
This problem may be partially limited by the fact that Germany is ultimately unlikely to see as many electric cars on the road as the leftist government wants, with experts expecting targets set by authorities to ultimately fall flat.
According to a report by Politico, researchers believe that the country’s aim of having 15 million battery vehicles in operation by 2030 is ultimately a “pipe dream”, with one professor suggesting the final figure will end up being less than half that.
The remote control measures, which the Federal Network Agency supposedly aims to see up and running by January 2024, will likely be in place by the middle of next winter, during which Germany is likely to see even greater energy issues that it is currently struggling with now.
Earlier this month, both the EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the International Energy Agency warned that, while the entire bloc would likely be able to make it through the energy crisis this winter, it faces a significant gas shortfall in the tens of billions of cubic meters next year that it still needs to fill.
Despite this, the planned restrictions on car chargers have reportedly upset Germany’s automotive industry, with one industry leader, President of the Association of the Automotive Industry Hildegard Müller, saying it does not provide “intelligent incentives” for authorities to “prevent local network overloads before they occur”.
However, Germany may encounter serious energy issues long before such great reset plans fall into place, with the Federal Network Agency’s head, Klaus Müller, warning earlier this week that the country is burning through its gas reserve far faster than initially budgeted for.
“We don’t have to ring the alarm after two or three weeks like now. But it must not go on like this for the whole of January and February,” he said, warning that the country was only saving 5 per cent of gas compared to the previous year, when the figure needed to be closer to 20 per cent.
He went on to say that, while there was no need to panic just yet, greater savings needed to be made over the coming months, despite the fact that they are more often cooler than December.
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