Interview
We are replacing estimates with real knowledge
An interview with the two network experts Hans-Werner Leenen and Martin Breitenbach from NGN NETZGESELLSCHAFT NIEDERRHEIN MBH
An interview with the two network experts Hans-Werner Leenen and Martin Breitenbach from NGN NETZGESELLSCHAFT NIEDERRHEIN MBH
All of Germany is talking about the energy transition. What do you consider your biggest challenges?
Hans-Werner Leenen: We have to make the right decisions: What comes now? One scenario would be complete electrification of the grids. Perhaps soon we’ll no longer want to use fossil fuels for heating and automobiles, but only electricity and water. The electrical grid would then have to handle the entire power supply. That’s not possible with the grid as it is today.
So do we need new grids?
Leenen: Yes, but the demand differs by scenario. In the past, the need for expansion was easy to calculate, since there was only one direction of energy flow in a system dominated by large, centralized power plants. The increase in distributed energy generators and bidirectional energy flows has made it difficult to assess how to design the grids for the future. So we are going in a different direction: We first measure and see what really happens in our network and base our network expansion on that. We are replacing estimates with real knowledge.
That means monitoring takes priority?
Martin Breitenbach: Definitely. We first need to know more about our network in order to be able to make better decisions. We need to look more closely at the load flows, for example. For instance, we have local network stations that behave normally in the medium voltage ring, but there could be a significant strain on the low voltage infrastructure, since the generation by PV plants is offset by loads within the low voltage network, for example. We can detect that with current transformers and power measurement modules.