Storm 'Ciara' blows German wind power production to new record

The storm dubbed "Ciara" has pushed wind power production to a new record in Germany, temporarily boosting feed-in into the grid to nearly 43.7 gigawatts (GW), grid operator TenneT told news agency dpa in an article carried by public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. The previous record stood at 43.4 GW. According to energy think tank Agora Energiewende*, renewables covered about three quarters of Germany's power consumption on 9 and 10 February, with onshore and offshore wind turbines contributing the lion's share. However, the storm also caused troubles for grid operators, since the record feed-in happened intermittently and even caused some turbines to be shut down for safety reasons, the article says.
According to the website energy-charts by research institute Fraunhofer ISE, wind power alone covered nearly 60 percent of net power production on 10 February, dwarfing coal-fired power production, which stood at about 11 percent on that day.

Wind, solar and other renewable sources supplied almost 43 percent of gross German power consumption in 2019, up from 38.2 percent in 2018. This marked a new annual record that already exceeds the government’s 2020 target of 35 percent, but the unprecedented output level is overshadowed by a near halt in onshore wind development. The number of new wind turbines recently fell to unprecedentedly low levels and the country is veering off track in reaching its 2030 target of a 65 percent renewables share

*Like the Clean Energy Wire, Agora Energiewende is a project funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation.