The share of renewable energy in the public power mix continues to increase. This is evident from the annual evaluation for the production of electricity in Germany, which was presented by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar energy systems. Accordingly, the solar energy recorded 16 percent growth, the biggest Plus prior to the wind energy, the increase of 5.4 percent. This is mainly due to the many hours of sunshine are in the summer.

Overall, the share of solar, Wind and hydro power, and biomass-generated electricity in the overall Mix climbed to 40.4 percent. Ten years ago, he was still at 16.2 percent. Because of the dry summer, the water power, amount of power produced decreased, as well as the generation of electricity from coal and Gas.

According to the Fraunhofer Institute dined photovoltaic systems in the past year, about 45,7 terawatt-hours to the public grid, or 16 percent more than in the previous year. The wind energy produced in 2018, approximately 111 terawatt hours and was the second largest energy source after lignite. The majority of the wind flow was generated in the North sea.

Jointly produced by Solar and wind energy equipment last year, about 157 terawatt-hours and are therefore, in total, prior to lignite, coal and nuclear energy. The water power was due to the extremely dry summer, with only 17 terawatt hours of electricity generation. This is the second lowest value of the last 30 years. The biomass was approximately 45 terawatt-hours at the level of the previous year.

a Strong decline in gas-fired power plants

In the case of the conventional energies, the brown coal was a total 131,3 produced terawatt-hours in front. This is two percent less than in 2017. The brown coal-fired power plants responded more flexibly to the low market electricity prices than in the past few years, and slowed down according to their performance. This is mainly done at low or negative market prices for electricity. However, brown coal-fired power plants react still inflexible to the high feed-in of renewable energies.

In the generation of electricity from coal-fired power plants, there was a decline of 7.4 per cent to 75.7 terawatt hours. 72,1 terawatt-hours produced in the past year, nuclear power plants – the same as in the previous year.

gas-fired power plants recorded the largest decline: they have produced last year, 40 terawatt-hours for the public electricity supply and were 18.5 percent below the previous year’s level.

In 2018, an export surplus of approximately of 45.6 terawatt-was reached hours. This flowed largely in the Netherlands, which conduct a bulk of its electricity to Belgium and UK. On place two and three of the recipients, Austria and Switzerland, which is mainly a transit country to Italy. Overall, Germany was able to export electricity to the value of € 1.81 billion.