Graph of Day: Germany reaches 51% renewables

Germany reached 51 per cent renewable energy share for its electricity generation in the last week, extending the extraordinary results for the year to date.

As we reported on Tuesday, renewable energy accounted for 41 per cent of electricity generation in March, a record level for the month – while for the full year the share has totalled 36.5 per cent.

germany renewables table

This first chart above shows the result for week 15, which was not actually the highest week of the year so far – that was 53 per cent reached in week eight.

Wind accounted for 29.4 per cent of all electricity generation for the week, providing the most amount of power from any energy source, while solar was at 8.6 per cent, nearly overtaking both nuclear and hard coal.

The chart below shows the total for the year to date, with solar at 4.9 per cent (most of the year has been winter or early spring) and wind at 18.9 per cent.

rsz_1screen_shot_2017-04-19_at_100324_am

This other graph below – also from the excellent energy graphs at the Fraunhofer Institute’s energy charts website, shows the total generation in the first quarter, along with the changes over the previous year, and percentage increases.

germany 2017 to date

 

Comments

6 responses to “Graph of Day: Germany reaches 51% renewables”

  1. Joe Avatar
    Joe

    Germany needs to look at appointing a “Wind Farm Commissioner” like we have here in Australia. I mean all those ugly windmills ( the ones that Abbott and Hockey bang on about ) and the millions of German citizens who are going crazy with all the wind turbines spinning across the country./ sarcasm. It is appalling that Australia with the full suite of renewable energy resources is a long way behind Germany. If you take out our Snowy Hydro, which was built decades ago, we do bugger all renewables at a national level. Shame on Australia,

    1. Steven Gannon Avatar
      Steven Gannon

      Tony Abbott stood near a wind turbine once, now he’s bonkers mad and bat poo crazy.

    2. Rod Avatar
      Rod

      It makes me wonder, if we could time shift, if the original snowy would be built with this mob in power.

  2. George Darroch Avatar
    George Darroch

    Unfortunately their nuclear energy generation is also decreasing.

    1. onesecond Avatar
      onesecond

      Yes, but this year not to a law or anything like that, there were just some things broken in the aging plants that led to 4 of the 8 still operating plants not producing electricity. They are just not reliable.

    2. heinbloed Avatar
      heinbloed

      Would the retired atom reactors still be online the amount of RE-power couldn’t be transported and consumed, it’s either or …….

      In France 18 reactors are down today:

      https://www.edf.fr/en/the-edf-group/who-we-are/activities/optimisation-and-trading/list-of-outages-and-messages/list-of-outages

      They usually don’t tell beforehand, they just suddenly die-off:

      http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/european-power-prompt-power-prices-bullish-on-26713690

      Funny that sudden reactor break-downs are categorized by the owner EdF as “planned”, isn’t it?

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