Renewables deliver over half of German electricity in first nine months, coal plunges

Renewable energy sources generated over half of German electricity across the nine months of 2020, with wind the clear winner generating over a quarter of the country’s power.

Further highlighting the growth of renewable energy in Germany’s power mix is the hierarchy of generating sources. Wind energy generated 96.8TWh over the first three quarters of 2020, accounting for nearly 27% of the total. Brown coal was the second largest source of electricity generation, with 15% of the total, but importantly, third place was solar PV with 13%.

Both wind and solar, then, generated more electricity than nuclear and natural gas, and when combined, the two main sources of renewable electricity generation accounted for 143.9TWh, or 39.75% of the total, according to Energy-Charts, a publicly available tool provided by Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).

Combining all renewable sources of electricity generation together reveals that renewables have so far generated 193.11TWh, or 52.9% of Germany’s total so far this year.

Bruno Burger, Head of Department New Devices and Technologies at Fraunhofer ISE, regularly uses his Twitter account to highlight the work of Energy-Charts and the attendant highlights of Germany’s power network.

In several recent Tweets, Burger highlighted the dramatic shift in Germany’s power mix this year, which saw electricity generation from brown coal and hard coal fall sharply.

Specifically, across the first three quarters of 2020, brown coal saw its share of the German power mix fall by 28% while hard coal fell by 36.3%.

Burger also recently highlighted an impressive record for Germany’s solar PV sector, which generated 46.5TWh over the first three quarters of 2020, the same total generated during 2019, leaving plenty of room to set an impressive new annual record.