News

Germany generated so much renewable energy last week it was paying

It looks like a future dependent on renewable energy could indeed be possible, as Germany demonstrated on (Sunday) 8 May when it generated so much energy naturally that energy prices went into negative for the first time.

The weather was so sunny and windy that at about 1pm in the day, the wind, hydro, solar and biomass plants in Germany generated 87% (55GW) of the entire amount of power (63GW) being consumed in the country.

German clean energy think tank Agora Energiewende says that in 2015, the average amount of renewable energy contributed to the total power consumed in Germany amounted to at most 33%. But because the power generated that day was so much, it caused power prices to plummet for several hours, which meant that commercial customers were actually being paid to consume electricity instead.

"We have a greater share of renewable energy every year," Christoph Podewils, director of communication at Agora Energiewende told Quartz. "The power system adapted to this quite nicely. This day shows again that a system with large amounts of renewable energy works fine." Unfortunately, Germany's national power grid system is still too rigid, so power suppliers and industrial customers were unable to respond to the situation quickly enough on Sunday.