"My stomach turns every day."

“News about prices, and especially electricity prices – I can’t bear to hear it any more. Why?

Because politics doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Electricity is scarce and expensive. The latter is even true. But scarce? Our wind farm in Fürstenau is hardly running any more. At least when the wind blows. Not because the machines are faulty. Not because the grid is short of capacity. No. Because people are gambling on the exchange.

As wind power operators, we were forced onto this exchange. By the legislator. Now people say we get too much for our electricity. For August 2022 we received around 46 cents for our production on the exchange. That is something to be ashamed of. You can’t tell anyone. But it’s not our fault. We have to go to the exchange. If only the electricity were actually scarce and we delivered at this price according to supply and demand. No.

Right now: today is Saturday, 17 September 2022. Our farm could produce around 8,000 kWh per hour. But it is curtailed. Curtailed because there is speculation on the exchange again. Now, this shouldn’t bother us at all. We are paid in full for the curtailed “electricity”. After all, the customer pays. The customer is told that electricity is scarce and that they must save. In reality, they pay for the electricity that was switched off and thereby made scarce, and don’t know how they are going to manage. Perverse. Sorry.

Hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours have already not been produced at our farm this way. Because politics doesn’t have it on its radar at all. Switch on nuclear power plants because electricity is scarce. Burn coal again because electricity is scarce, and put plenty of gas into the power plants too, because electricity is scarce. And switch off wind farms – so that electricity stays scarce. Dear electricity customer: you are being taken for a ride, and so are we. I would like to supply the nearest baker with affordable electricity, the nearest housing estate or the nearest factory. I am not allowed to. Because the big players do the business – for themselves, not for the general public. And politics plays along once again.”

Wolfgang Kiene, managing director of Maka Windkraft