Europe’s biggest economy marches towards a greener future.

Aug 18 was a Sunday like any other in Germany. At 2 pm, the country’s renewable generation capacity peaked at 41 GW while demand was around 53.5 GW – meaning that renewables accounted for roughly 75% of generation capacity, a new record for Europe’s biggest economy.

At the time of the peak, wind capacity stood at 18.6 GW, solar at 13.5, hydro at 4 with approx. 4.9 from biomass. This meant that theoretically only 13.4 GW of conventional thermal generation was needed to serve the load. In reality, however, thermal plants were throttled back to 21.4 GW, either because they could not ramp down any further or for grid reliability reasons.

Mostly renewable 

Germany routinely exports its excess generation to neighboring countries during such episodes, while importing power at other times to balance the network.

The 4 main network operators increasingly will have to improvise to maintain the reliability of the grid – a challenging task given the intermittency of the renewables.

Published Originally in EEnergy Informer: The International Energy Newsletter September 2014 Issue.