Germany again meets around 100 percent of power demand with renewables

Germany's renewable power production briefly exceeded the entire country's electricity demand on 1 May, data provided by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) suggests. Renewable power output on the windy and sunny public holiday reached 53,987 megawatt hours (MWh) at 1pm, while consumption reached 53,768 MWh, according to the BNetzA’s live energy data portal smard.de. The data suggests that renewable power production exceeded consumption for about two and a half hours. Germany’s economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier said on social network Twitter that it was “great” that the country was able to cover its demand with renewables. “Now transmission lines take precedence so that the power can flow,” Altmaier added. Germany briefly covered 100 percent of its power demand with renewables on 1 January, another public holiday, when wind power alone covered 85 percent of demand. However, the data presented by the BNetzA is still preliminary and energy generation analysts disagree how accurate certain supply and demand measurements are. This means the actual renewables share could be below 100 percent, depending on the methodology and data accuracy.

Dass es heute 100% erneuerbaren Strom gab, ist großartig! Jetzt Vorfahrt für Leitungen, damit der Strom auch fließt! https://t.co/o4XFQpdXYy

— Peter Altmaier (@peteraltmaier) May 1, 2018

Find the BNetzA’s live data portal in English here.

For background, read the CLEW article Renewables cover about 100% of German power use for first time ever.