Austria Power Grid: Winter Strain & Need for Gas Plants

On February 1, 2023, Austria imported approximately 106 gigawatt-hours (GWh) and 4300 megawatts (MW) of electricity. This equates to roughly half of the average daily consumption of 193 GWh during that season. Although there isn’t a fundamental lack of power plants, installed capacity has increased by 37.5 percent in recent years. Solar capacity, in particular, has quintupled to 10,000 MW between 2020 and 2025, and wind power has risen by 50 percent to 4500 MW. But, APG board member Gerhard Christiner emphasizes a crucial question: what proportion of this capacity is actually available during critical times?

Photovoltaic systems often generate significantly more electricity than needed during the summer months, but contributed only three percent to the total electricity consumption of 28.8 TWh from October to the complete of January. Wind energy accounted for 14 percent, while hydropower provided 38 percent.

A fifth of the demand had to be met through electricity imports and the use of thermal power plants. “We operated all thermal power plants – nobody likes to talk about that, but if it is claimed that we don’t need them, that is simply not true,” Christiner stressed. He added that policymakers must decide whether the country wants to rely on imports for its future supply security. They shouldn’t delay making that decision.

The number of thermal power plants has been declining rapidly for the past ten years. The installed capacity of coal, oil, and gas-fired power plants decreased by 40 percent between 2014 and 2025. Many gas-fired power plants are aging and may soon be decommissioned. “new gas-fired power plants will be needed in the next ten years if we do not want to be completely dependent on imports during dark doldrums,” says Christiner. However, the regulatory framework for building new gas-fired power plants is currently lacking, and under current market conditions, a new build is not economically viable.

If policymakers opt for an import model to secure supply, action is still needed. Currently, the transmission capacity between Austria and its neighboring countries is insufficient to import the amount of (affordable) electricity from, for example, Germany, that would be necessary. Austria has to rely on more expensive gas-fired power plants, even though cheaper electricity is available across the border. This leads to the formation of separate price zones in Austria and Germany. Austria was decoupled from the European internal market for more than 93 percent of the winter half-year 2025/26.

This also has concrete cost implications: electricity in Austria was, on average, 21 euros per MWh more expensive than in Germany during the winter months. In total, this cost the national economy around 600 million euros over the winter. The price disparity highlights the challenges of relying on cross-border energy markets during periods of high demand.