Renewables account for 49.6% of Germany's power mix in 2022

The share of renewables in Germany's power mix rose to 49.6% in 2022 from 45.6% in the prior year, driven by a solid increase in solar power generation.

Overall, renewable power plants produced 244 TWh last year compared with 226 TWh in 2021, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE said on Tuesday.

Electricity generation from solar energy grew 19% on the year to about 57.6 TWh in 2022, helped by sunny weather and the 6.1 GW of new solar capacity that was deployed across the country by the end of November. About 52.6 TWh of the total solar output was fed into the public grid and 5 TWh were self-consumed. Fraunhofer ISE noted that between April and August, solar systems in Germany produced more electricity than coal-fired power plants.

Wind energy was the biggest source of electricity in Germany last year with onshore wind parks generating 98.7 TWh and offshore turbines adding a further 24.8 TWh. At the end of November, the country's installed onshore wind capacity was 58.2 GW while offshore wind reached 8.1 GW.

Unlike wind and solar, hydropower generation fell to 16 TWh in 2022 from 19 TWh a year earlier although the installed capacity remained stable at 4.94 GW. The drop was caused by the hot and dry summer.

Biomass-fired power plants with a total capacity of 9.4 GW produced a further 42.2 TWh which is 0.4 TWh more than in 2021.

Among conventional energy sources, coal-fired power generation increased for the third year in a row as a result of the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Lignite power plants fed 107 TWh into the grid, up from 99 TWh, and hard coal contributed 56 TWh, up from 47 TWh.

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!