E.ON chief considers complete protection of the power grid against attacks unrealistic

Birnbaum drew a comparison with crime prevention in the private sphere. "If you go to the police and ask: What should I do? They'll tell you: Make it hard for burglars. They never say: Make it impossible, because: That's just not possible. It's the same for us." In other words, facilities can be made more secure, but not completely impervious: "We can make our facilities more secure, but not completely impervious."

The backdrop to the statement is a cluster of fires at electricity infrastructure facilities. Just one week before the dpa report, a fire had knocked out a substation in Reutlingen. According to the authorities, investigators assume arson. Birnbaum also commented on the incidents in the capital.

Attacks in Reutlingen and Berlin

In Berlin, an arson attack on two electricity pylons occurred in September of the previous year, and in January of this year cables on a cable bridge were hit. In both Berlin cases, it took several days before the electricity supply was fully restored. These acts are also classified as arson by investigators.

Birnbaum stressed that his company could make attacks more difficult and improve its ability to respond. "We can make it harder, and we can better position ourselves to quickly restore things once the damage has occurred." The central task is to keep the consequences of an attack on the population's supply as low as possible. Which specific protective measures E.ON is stepping up in the short term, Birnbaum left open in the interview.

The scale of the grid makes the task demanding: with around 700,000 kilometers of lines, E.ON is responsible, according to its own description, for nearly one-third of the total line kilometers in Germany. Monitor hundreds of thousands of kilometers physically without gaps is, in the group's assessment, not feasible. The E.ON chief therefore sees primarily two levers: preventive hurdles for perpetrators and robust emergency plans to limit outages.

Scale of the E.ON grid

The incidents also raise the question of the role of the federal government, states, and security authorities. Which protective tasks are handled by the police and intelligence services and which lie with the grid operators was not a separate topic in the dpa conversation. Birnbaum merely pointed out that absolute security is unattainable for houses as well as for critical infrastructure.

The dpa report is datelined Berlin and Essen. E.ON is, according to its own figures, the largest electricity distribution grid operator in Germany and operates around 700,000 kilometers of lines, roughly one-third of all line kilometers in the country.

In the public debate on critical infrastructure, the energy group is not alone in this assessment. Other utilities and authorities have also emphasized for years that one-hundred-percent protection of lines, substations, and transformer stations is not possible with reasonable effort. Birnbaum's interview comes at a time when concern about further attacks on the power grid is growing.

Regardless, the incidents in Reutlingen and Berlin showed that even a single attack can have severe consequences – for example, when the electricity supply is interrupted for days. For grid operators, Birnbaum said, this means continuing to invest in resilience: redundant lines, mobile transformers, trained personnel, and clear reporting chains to police and authorities.