Problem is, our power grid is modern because huge parts of it are less than 20 years old.
In most countries, power lines and plants are replaced only when it is absolutely necessary, hence they're much older.
In Germany, electricity was quasi state (state run private companies with localized responsibility) run until a few years ago, with guaranteed investment in grids and plants every few years.
Now the former state monopolists have been privatized, resulting in steeper prices, even less competition (4 major suppliers in Germany, but no direct competition between them), no new investments and less maintenance.
Add to that the "nuclear exit", a typical german compromise.
Re nuclear power, you can basically:
- continue it, thereby retaining a very expensive but extremely reliable energy source and a huge high tech industry with endless export possibilities, but risking a disaster and having to deal with waste
- abandon it, reducing the risk and waste while losing the industry and being forced to invest in more emission intensive power sources like coal
In a bout of fancy brainwork, our politicians and industry managed to combine the drawbacks of both concepts into a compromise so convoluted that no one seems to have figured out what it actually means. Except the nuclear industry, which is quite dead, leaving that technology field to the french (with their less than enviable safety record) and the brits (Sellafield, nuff said).
