Next new solar & wind power record

Yesterday, combined wind and solar power reached a new record of nearly 36 megawatts at around 12 noon, topping the amount of power from coal and natural gas. The record is, however, unlikely to stand for long.

I know everyone would like to have constant updates of these record levels of solar & wind power in Germany, but honestly I doubt I will be able to keep up with it. Just a few days ago, my colleague Thomas Gerke reported on the record solar power production. The record set yesterday is thus the second in a week, and we have not really gotten started. If I write about every record set this year, I won't have time for much else.

As Renewables International has repeatedly reported, wind and solar power often complement each other, with more wind power being generated when there is less solar power and vice versa. But yesterday, there was a bit of a convergence at around 12 noon, when solar power production reached nearly 20 gigawatts (not a record level) with wind coming in at close to 16 gigawatts.

Conventional power production yesterday, Thursday, 18 April 2013. (Click to enlarge)

EEX

Because it was a workday, power demand remained relatively high. As a result, production of power from coal was "only" pushed down to just under 28 gigawatts (11.7 GW from hard coal and 16.3 GW from lignite), with power from natural gas coming in at below 1.3 GW. Combined wind & solar thus briefly exceeded electricity from fossil fuels. Nuclear power production remained consistently between 9.1-9.2 GW due to the inflexibility of these power plants.

Power production at hard coal plants varied the most, peaking at around 14.4 GW at 7 AM, just four hours after bottoming out at 6 GW at 3 AM. In other words, German hard coal plants ramped up by 8.4 GW within a mere four hours.

It looks like German power exports are greater than German researcher Bruno Burger expected. He may have to rescale his chart just to get the bars back on it (click to enlarge).

Bruno Burger, Fraunhofer ISE

It is unlikely, however, that these plant operators are happy about the situation, which will only worsen for them. Prices fell to below a cent yesterday per kilowatt-hour on the exchange. Yesterday was not particularly sunny in Germany, and once the sun kicks in nationwide (yes, that does happen), we are likely to get 70 percent or more of the 33 gigawatts of solar (and counting), which would already put us near 25 GW.

Furthermore, the situation is already much different on the weekend, when power consumption drops below 50 GW even during the afternoon. Had power consumption been that low yesterday, all conventional plants would have been pushed down to around 15 GW – not including exports.

And speaking of exports, Germany is going to break all records this year. Last year, Germany posted its most recent record level of exports at 22.8 terawatt-hours, but Germany already had 16 terawatt-hours of net exports in the first quarter of 2012. I refer the reader to slide 12 on Bruno Burger‘s (Fraunhofer ISE) PDF. And if you look closely, you'll see that the data are already off of his chart, which may require him to rescale everything. (Craig Morris)