Germany is burying its electricity grid. 10,000 kilometres of cable. Underground. Right now.

 

Germany is burying its electricity grid. 10,000 kilometres of cable. Underground. Right now.

Above-ground power lines — the steel lattice pylons that march across German landscapes — take years to permit, face relentless local opposition, and have blocked several critical transmission projects for decades. Germany's answer: go underground. The SuedLink and SuedOstLink projects — 700-kilometre and 580-kilometre HVDC cable corridors running from the wind-rich north to the industrial south — will be buried entirely, avoiding the planning conflicts that have stalled overhead alternatives for 15 years.

The technical achievement is significant. Burying high-voltage direct-current cables at transmission scale — 2 gigawatts per corridor — requires a level of engineering precision that underground AC cables cannot achieve over long distances. HVDC underground has lower losses, no electromagnetic field concerns, and is invisible to communities living above it. The cable corridors are dug, laid, backfilled, and the land returned to agricultural use. A year after construction, the only evidence is a maintenance strip.

SuedLink alone will carry enough electricity to supply 10 million German homes — moving surplus offshore wind power from the North Sea coast to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, where energy-intensive industry clusters. Without it, renewable electricity that is generated in the north gets curtailed while the south burns gas.

Germany is building the nervous system its energy transition has been missing.

Source: TenneT TSO & Bundesnetzagentur Germany, 2024