One country, one price — across a grid that can't move the power

The DE-LU north–south bottleneck is internal to the single bidding zone, so it appears in neither cross-border flows nor zonal prices. The evidence that it exists is the control-area balance and redispatch volume — not a price gap.

1 · Surplus north, deficit south

net balance by month, GW

North surplus (50Hertz, TenneT) South deficit (Amprion, TransnetBW)

Net balance = generation − load per area group (SMARD), Europe/Berlin local time. The bottleneck is internal to the single DE-LU zone, so it never shows in cross-border flows or zonal prices — redispatch volume is the evidence.

2 · Redispatch volume

by month, GWh

Redispatch (GWh)

Redispatch — power physically re-routed because the north–south corridor is full — is the evidence of trapped power. Reported by the TSOs (netztransparenz), 1–3 day lag.

3 · The split that was decided against

the contested economics, as a range

A contested range, both poles cited — ENTSO-E DE5 study vs. academic studies finding small spreads. Wattlas takes no side and computes no split-zone price.

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