How does grid congestion affect your monthly electricity bill?
Grid congestion can actually help lower your monthly electricity bill by reducing the network fees you pay .
When power lines across borders hit capacity limits, grid operators auction off transmission rights and collect “congestion income” . By law, this money must first be used to guarantee grid reliability or to build and maintain network infrastructure . However, if the funds cannot be efficiently spent on these technical upgrades, regulatory authorities can approve using the residual money to offset the costs of running the grid .
Because these savings are used specifically to lower network tariffs—which make up a standard portion of consumer electricity bills—the congestion fees collected from energy bottlenecks are ultimately passed back to you as lower utility rates .
Who gets the 220 million euros in bottleneck revenues?
The 220 million euros in cross-border bottleneck revenues are collected by the national transmission system operators (TSOs) that operate the high-voltage electricity grids .
On the German side, the specific grid companies that receive and manage these funds are :
Amprion
TenneT TSO
TransnetBW
50Hertz Transmission
Additionally, Baltic Cable AB collects the revenues specifically generated at the Swedish-German border .
These grid operators cannot keep these revenues as standard corporate profit; they are legally mandated to reinvest the funds into guaranteeing network capacity, upgrading grid infrastructure, or lowering network fees for everyday electricity consumers .
Where is the money collected from grid bottlenecks being spent?
The money collected from grid bottlenecks is legally required to be spent on two main priorities:
Guaranteeing the actual availability of the grid’s allocated capacity to ensure electricity can flow reliably .
Maintaining or expanding cross-border network capacity through infrastructure investments, particularly by building new interconnectors .
If grid operators cannot efficiently use the revenues for these technical upgrades, any leftover funds must be spent on lowering network tariffs (which directly reduces what consumers pay on their bills) or placed in a separate internal account until they can be spent on the required grid upgrades .
Why do electricity network bottlenecks generate over 220 million euros?
Electricity network bottlenecks generate over 220 million euros because of physical capacity limits on cross-border power lines and the competitive auctions used to allocate them .
At several of Germany’s international borders, there are physical capacity constraints (bottlenecks) on the high-voltage lines, meaning the grid cannot carry unlimited amounts of electricity between countries . To manage these bottlenecks fairly and transparently, grid operators run market-based capacity auctions (such as daily, monthly, and annual auctions) . Electricity traders who want to transport power across these borders must compete against each other, and their access to the grid depends entirely on their bidding prices . Because cross-border electricity trading is highly active and capacity is strictly limited, these competitive bidding fees add up significantly over the course of a year, accumulating to a total of 220,943,754 Euro in collected “congestion income” .
Who forces grid operators to spend congestion profits on consumers?
Grid operators are legally forced to spend congestion revenues for the benefit of consumers by a combination of European Union laws and national regulatory watchdogs .
Under the EU’s Regulation (EC) No 714/2009 (specifically Article 16(6)), operators are prohibited from keeping these bottleneck fees as standard corporate profits . Instead, they must spend them on grid reliability and infrastructure upgrades, or—if those options are not efficient—on lowering consumer network tariffs .
To make sure these rules are strictly followed, national regulatory authorities—such as Germany’s Bundesnetzagentur—actively monitor the operators, review their spending, and must formally approve any methodology used to lower consumer utility tariffs with this money .
How did one power cable spark an international regulatory battle?
The international regulatory battle was sparked over how Baltic Cable AB, the company operating the Baltic Cable electricity interconnector between Germany and Sweden, spent its bottleneck revenues .
By European law, any congestion income generated from operating cross-border power links must be reinvested back into the network to guarantee capacity or build grid infrastructure . However, the Swedish regulatory authority, Energimarknadsinspektionen (EI), determined that Baltic Cable AB’s handling of the revenues it collected between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2015, did not comply with these strict European standards .
Consequently, on June 9, 2016, the Swedish regulator issued an official decision forcing Baltic Cable AB to transfer a portion of those revenues into a separate, dedicated internal account to ensure they would only be spent in compliance with EU regulations—a dispute significant enough to be highlighted by Germany’s Bundesnetzagentur in its national oversight report .
Source institutions：Bundesnetzagentur
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