What specific power plants and units were affected in the second grid attack, and what was the immediate impact on Germany's electricity supply?

The second grid attack on Tuesday evening forced five lignite-fired power plant units of RWE AG offline — specifically Neurath G and F, and Niederaußem H, G and K — located in western Germany’s Rhine industrial region. These units had a combined capacity of 4.2 gigawatts, most of which were actively feeding electricity into the grid at the time. The outage caused a 'very extreme deficit' between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., driving preliminary imbalance prices to €5,000 per megawatt-hour, before the system stabilized after 9 p.m.

How did authorities characterize the nature of the attack, and what broader context of energy infrastructure threats does it fit into?

Local Essen police stated they were operating on the assumption of 'a deliberate act, a criminal offense,' indicating the incident was treated as intentional sabotage. This attack is part of a pattern of escalating threats to Germany’s energy infrastructure in 2024, including an earlier major arson attack in Berlin that caused a widespread blackout and, on the same day, damage to transmission lines in eastern Germany using homemade projectiles — which triggered a temporary outage at LEAG’s Jänschwalde coal plant.

Germany Hit by Second Grid Attack, Shutting RWE Coal Units

Sep 1, 2026

Germany's power grid faced a second attack, shutting five RWE lignite units and spiking imbalance prices to €5,000 per megawatt-hour. Suspected deliberate acts highlight critical energy infrastructure vulnerabilities ahead of planned restorations.

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