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Glossary · Energy industry & energy transition

Feed-in management (Einspeisemanagement)

Feed-in Management Curtailment congestion management wind energy photovoltaics grid operation grid congestion renewable energies

Definition and basic idea

Feed-in management refers to interventions in the feed-in of power generation plants when grid operation would otherwise be at risk. A plant could technically generate electricity, but it temporarily feeds in less or nothing at all, because the grid at that location, at that time or under the applicable safety rules cannot absorb the full feed-in. The visible result is curtailment. A wind turbine stands still although the wind is blowing, or a photovoltaic plant delivers less active power although the sun is shining. This is not due to a defect but to an instruction from the grid operator. Wind and solar plants are most frequently affected. In principle, however, other generation plants and storage facilities can also be included in congestion management.

Legal status in Germany

Historically, feed-in management was a distinct legal concept in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). Most recently, sections 14 and 15 EEG regulated the curtailment of renewable and CHP plants and the compensation for it (hardship provision). Conventional power plants, by contrast, fell under redispatch pursuant to the Energy Industry Act (EnWG). This separation no longer exists. According to the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), the separate EEG provisions ceased to apply on 1 October 2021 with the new system of Redispatch 2.0. Since then, grid operators have had to take priority-entitled generation from renewable energies and CHP directly into account in their selection decisions for redispatch measures under section 13a EnWG. Anyone who speaks of feed-in management today in Germany therefore usually means, colloquially, redispatch involving renewable plants. It is no longer a standalone legal institution.

The core of the current regulation is section 13a EnWG. It applies to operators of generation and storage plants with a nominal capacity of 100 kilowatts or more. It also covers plants that a grid operator can remotely control at any time. These operators must adjust their active or reactive power generation or their active power consumption upon request, or tolerate such adjustment. The measures are coordinated with the connecting grid operator and the affected upstream and intermediate grid operators. Via section 14 EnWG, the regime also applies to distribution system operators. Where measures of a downstream grid operator compete with those of the upstream operator, measures within its own grid should generally take precedence. These statements refer to the German legal position as of the end of 2026. Other countries have their own rules and terminology.

Distinction from redispatch and market reactions

Redispatch is the overarching term. It refers to the grid-related change in the operation of power plants, storage facilities or flexible loads so that power flows are distributed differently. Classically, generation is reduced upstream of a grid congestion and increased downstream of it, so that the electricity balance remains in equilibrium. Feed-in management describes only one side of this process, namely the reduction at renewable energy plants and CHP plants.

To be distinguished from this is economically motivated ramping down, for example during negative electricity prices. If a direct marketer curtails a plant because feeding in is not worthwhile or because support is not paid for those periods, this is a reaction to the market. It is not an instruction for grid security, and there is no grid-related compensation for it. This distinction is important for analysis. Market-driven curtailment indicates a problem of prices and incentives. Grid-driven curtailment indicates a limit of transport capacity.

Technical causes

The cause usually lies in restrictions of the grid. Lines must not be thermally overloaded. Voltage bands must be maintained. Transformers and switchgear have load limits. In addition, under the n-1 security criterion, the grid must still operate safely even if an important item of equipment fails. The usable capacity in normal operation is therefore smaller than the mere utilisation of a line would suggest. An analogy is a motorway on which one lane must always remain free for emergencies. Congestion arises both in the transmission grid, often between wind-rich regions in the north and consumption centres in the south, and locally in distribution grids with high photovoltaic expansion.

Power and energy quantity

Feed-in management can be measured on two levels. The reduced power is stated in kilowatts, megawatts or gigawatts. The energy not fed in, the lost energy (Ausfallarbeit), is stated in kilowatt-hours, megawatt-hours or gigawatt-hours. A brief limitation of high power can be decisive for grid operation even if only little energy is lost. Conversely, frequent small interventions can add up to large amounts of energy over the year. An example: if a 3 MW wind turbine is throttled by 2 MW for four hours, 8 MWh of feed-in is missing.

Balancing and financial compensation

Since Redispatch 2.0 there have been two levels of compensation. First, the balancing group manager has a claim to balancing compensation. The missing quantity of electricity is thus credited to their balancing group, so that they do not have to procure it expensively as balancing energy. Second, the plant operator receives appropriate financial compensation. According to the law, it is appropriate if, taking the balancing compensation into account, it leaves the operator economically neither better nor worse off than without the measure. For renewable and CHP plants, this includes lost revenue, such as the market premium, plus additional expenses. The operator must repay saved expenses. The former flat-rate hardship compensation under section 15 EEG has thus been superseded. The costs are initially borne by the grid operator in whose grid the cause lies. Via grid charges, they ultimately end up with electricity consumers.

Order of magnitude in Germany

According to evaluations by the Federal Network Agency on SMARD, redispatch measures involving renewable plants amounted to around 9,379 GWh in 2025. This corresponds almost exactly to the previous year's figure of 9,389 GWh and to about 3.5 percent of total renewable electricity generation. More than 96 percent of renewable electricity could thus be fed in. Curtailment of photovoltaic plants increased significantly, mainly because of the expansion of almost 10 GW and the high irradiation. In the second quarter of 2026, redispatch involving renewable plants stood at 2,102 GWh, compared with 2,325 GWh in the same quarter of the previous year.

According to the Federal Government, the costs of grid congestion management as a whole were around 2.95 billion euros for 2024 and around 3.08 billion euros for 2025. Only a small part of this was accounted for by financial compensation to operators of renewable plants: 554 million euros in 2024 and 435 million euros in 2025. The larger part arises, among other things, from ramping up conventional power plants, from reserve power plants and from countertrading. The total costs of congestion management are therefore not the same as the costs of curtailment.

Common misconceptions

  • Curtailment does not prove a general oversupply of renewable electricity. While wind power is curtailed in one region, a conventional power plant may be running elsewhere because the electricity does not arrive there or because the plant is needed for grid stability. The problem is distribution across place and time, not the total quantity.

  • Storage does not automatically solve congestion. It only helps if it is located at the right grid node, has sufficient power and capacity, and absorbs electricity in a grid-serving manner during the critical hours. A purely market-driven storage facility can even aggravate congestion.

  • No curtailment at any price: A grid expanded for the last few peak hours can be more expensive than occasional curtailment. What matters is whether the interventions remain rare or point to permanent congestion.

Classification and significance

Rare, minor curtailment can be a sign of sensible grid dimensioning. Frequent and extensive curtailment, by contrast, shows that usable renewable energy does not reach consumption. At the same time, it causes compensation payments and costs for replacement generation. Remedies include grid expansion, better locational signals, higher utilisation of existing lines and grid-serving flexibility, for example through electrolysers, heat pumps, charging infrastructure or industrial load shifting. A prerequisite is that control and market rules enable and reward such behaviour.

The term must also be distinguished from residual load. It describes the electricity demand that remains after deducting wind and solar feed-in. Grid-driven curtailment reduces the renewable feed-in actually used and can thus increase the residual load that really has to be covered, although renewable energy would have been available. The term only becomes meaningful when the location, duration, power, energy quantity, cause and costs of a measure are known. Only then does it become clear whether this is normal operational management or a recurring bottleneck in the electricity system.

Sources

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Edited by eCMS on 11.11.2026 19:42

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