Network tariffs are incurred to make sure electricity reaches your home reliably. Network operators impose them to cover their costs for expanding, modernising and maintaining the grid. The tariffs are passed on to electricity suppliers, which in turn pass them on to final customers as part of the household customer price. In this way, final customers indirectly finance the costs of the grid.

Network tariffs are paid by commercial and industrial customers as well as household customers. A typical commercial customer in the energy monitoring is assumed to be a final customer with an annual electricity consumption of 50 MWh. Companies with an annual electricity consumption of 24 GWh are classed as industrial customers.

The network tariffs charged for 2025 by selected network operators:

^{IM: interval metered, SLP: standard load profile, MV: medium voltage, LV: low voltage, all values in ct/kWh.} 

A list of the network tariffs of all German network operators for 2025 can be accessed here and downloaded (in German).

Network tariffs can vary greatly by region and network operator. There are many reasons for this, including:

• Population density: in less densely populated areas, the network costs are shared between a smaller number of users.
• Differences in costs as a result of network expansion and the connection of renewable energy generation installations: this is based on the Bundesnetzagentur’s determination on distributing the additional costs incurred in networks as a result of the integration of renewable energy generating installations (BK8-24-001-A). The determination provides relief for regions with a particularly high burden of costs from renewable energy expansion from 2025 onwards. The costs incurred in reducing the burden on individual regions will be distributed across the country.
• Differences in the costs of congestion management measures: as the costs for managing network congestion are included in the network costs, these network costs tend to be higher in regions where generating capacity has to be curtailed or increased more often.
• Network age: older networks with a low residual value entail lower network costs than new networks.
• Network utilisation: the network capacity was generous, particularly in the eastern German states, and is therefore not always sufficiently utilised.