Graph of the Day: Germany’s wind and solar future

CleanTechnica

Greentech Media recently piggy-backed on our article regarding Germany’s new monthly solar generation record (5.1 GWh in the month of July). In that article, Herman K. Trabish pulled up some great charts from the Fraunhofer Institute’s Bruno Burger. I think I always find Dr. Burger’s charts interesting and useful. I’ve shared many of them here on CleanTechnica in the past. Herman pulled some great ones from the month of July that I think are worth an even wider share. He also added some useful commentary regarding Germany’s clean energy leadership.

“First, Germany’s installed solar capacity as of July 22, 2013, according to the Fraunhofer Institute’s Dr. Bruno Burger, was 34,558 megawatts. By contrast, the GTM Research Q1 2013 U.S. Solar Market Insight report put the U.S. installed PV capacity at 7,962 megawatts (with another 6 megawatts of concentrating solar power installed capacity),” Herman writes.

Pretty astounding, eh? And if you look at it on a per capita or per GDP basis, it’s even much more divergent, as I point out every chance I have.

“Germany also had an installed capacity of 30,532 megawatts of onshore and offshore wind in July. The U.S. had over 65,000 megawatts of wind at the end of 2012, though it has yet to build offshore,” Herman adds, regarding Germany’s wind power leadership.

Here are some charts before I keep going:

One more thing that Herman notes is something we’ve noted in the past but which gets even more striking the more wind and solar power grow: solar power and wind power complement each other wonderfully. This is true on a day-to-day basis, but it’s also true on a month-to-month basis. Here are Dr. Burger’s/Fraunhofer’s monthly charts on that for 2013 through July:

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Thanks to Herman for following up and adding in these excellent Fraunhofer charts.