Climate Energy Politics

New figures on the debacle of the German electricity transition

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The original article can be read as “Schlumpfs Grafik 112” in the online Nebelspalter of 13 May 2024.

For most Swiss left-wing and green politicians, Germany is leading the way in the expansion of wind and solar energy and is therefore a pioneer on the path to decarbonisation. However, an analysis of the German electricity system from last April with almost real-time data shows how naive and absurd this attitude is: Germany is struggling with extreme fluctuations in electricity generation from wind and solar, which make the entire system unstable, drive up costs and increase dependence on imports.

What is important:

– The installed capacity of German wind and solar power plants is currently a good three times the average electricity consumption.
– Despite this, only half of consumption was covered last April. In some cases, coverage was only a few per cent.
– The more green electricity is generated, the more stock market prices fall – even into negative territory.
– Solar and wind shortfalls are increasingly being compensated for with imports.

Every month, Rolf Schuster from the German association “Vernunftkraft” (see here) compiles a comprehensive overview of the generation and consumption of electricity, the costs and Germany’s import/export balance. He visualises data from the platform of European electricity grid operators “Entso-e” (see here) using graphs. I will show you some of these Schuster graphics below.

First, let’s take a look at how the electricity consumption (load) and the input from solar and wind developed during the 30 days of April 2024 in quarter-hourly values:

Sources: Entso-e / Rolf Schuster

The vertical axis of this graph shows the electrical output in megawatts (MW). Because you have to calculate with high figures at this resolution, I simplify the whole thing by dividing everything by a thousand and thus expressing all figures in gigawatts (GW): The y-axis thus shows power values in increments of ten from zero to 160 GW, with 1 GW corresponding to the output of the Swiss Gösgen nuclear power plant. The x-axis shows the 30 days of the month in quarter-hour portions.

Only 16 per cent of the power potential of wind and solar is utilised

The graph first shows in the background, with the light green area bordered in red at the top, how the total installed capacity of all solar and wind power plants had risen slightly to 157.8 GW by the end of April 2024. The share of wind installations amounts to 70 GW and that of solar installations to 88 GW. The total electricity yield from these two green generators is shown cumulatively in the graph: at the bottom (blue area) you can see the generation from the wind installations, stacked above (yellow peaks) is the yield from the solar installations. In total, the production from wind amounts to 12,000 gigawatt hours, the solar yield is 6,450 gigawatt hours.

This means that the solar plants are operating at a meagre ten percent capacity, while the wind plants were able to utilise 24 percent of their potential output. In total, only 16 per cent of the installed capacity of wind and solar, which corresponds to the potential of 158 nuclear power plants the size of Gösgen, was utilised. In contrast, 158 Gösgen nuclear power plants would have achieved a yield six times higher under normal full capacity utilisation.

At minimum, only three gigawatts came from sun and wind

But to what extent were wind and solar able to cover consumption this month? The development of consumption is shown in the graph with the brown area behind solar and wind. The monthly consumption of 36,700 gigawatt hours in April 2024 corresponds to an average consumption capacity of 51 GW. And because this average value for wind and solar production is 25.6 GW, exactly half of the consumption in this month was covered by wind and solar.

But beware, this only applies to the monthly average. In reality – as the graph clearly shows – the yield from solar and wind fluctuates enormously. Although the solar peaks are synchronised with the consumption peaks at midday, there are many gaps of varying sizes around them: Overall, the input from solar and wind fluctuates between 3 and 64 GW this month. As a result, there are only a few moments when the entire consumption could be covered with wind and solar power: For example, this was the case over midday on the weekends of 13/14 April and 27/28 April.

In the next graph, which shows the costs of wind and solar power, you can see what this entails:

Sources: Entso-e / Rolf Schuster

On the expenditure side (top light green) are the levies that the operators of wind and solar plants receive from consumers and the state in accordance with the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG, see here). Income (dark blue above) can be generated by selling electricity on the European electricity market exchange EEX (see here). All values are given in millions of euros per quarter of an hour.

Extreme solar peaks lead to negative exchange prices

The red area, which shows the difference between these inputs and outputs, is decisive for us. On the two weekends mentioned above with practically complete power supply from wind and solar over the midday period, it can be seen that the highest deficits of the month occurred on both the 13th/14th and the 27th/28th. The reason for this is that during the solar peaks at midday, ongoing electricity generation from biomass and water as well as from coal and gas could not be switched off so quickly and completely. This resulted in a large electricity surplus at this time, which led to a price collapse. And even worse: on the 13th, 14th and 28th there were even clearly negative electricity prices on the exchange (blue spikes in the negative range).

Germany is increasingly becoming an electricity importer

This absurd situation, where Germany even has to pay for its surplus electricity to be purchased by its neighbours, is likely to occur more frequently in the future: This is because the government is planning to massively expand wind and solar power plants. And because solar power, of all things, is the lowest-yielding form of electricity that is subsidised the most, this electricity turnaround is slowly hitting the wallet: the total electricity cost deficit due to solar and wind amounted to 1.6 billion euros in April 2024 alone.

But imports are also gradually increasing: Germany is increasingly becoming a net importer of electricity. This is mainly due to the unspeakable decision to shut down all nuclear power plants. Rolf Schuster’s quarter-hour charts show how the supply gaps left by the strong fluctuations in wind and solar power are increasingly having to be covered by imports.

According to Rolf Schuster, Germany exported a net 5 terawatt hours and imported 9.2 terawatt hours in the period from January to April 2024. Two thirds of this imported electricity consisted of French nuclear power.

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