95% of Germany’s electricity needs met by renewables

On Sunday 8th May at 11am, 95% of Germany's electricity was provided by renewable technology. A combination of sunny weather and strong winds lead to an impressive generation figures. Total capacity of PV installations in use reached 26.11 GW, whilst the capacity of wind power plants reached 20.83 GW, according to Agora Energiewende. Biomass power plants contributed another 5.14 GW and hydropower generation reached 2.75 GW. At that moment, Germany's energy consumption totalled around 57.8 GW, which means 95% of it could be met by renewables.

This breaks Germany's previous generation record of 70-80% which was achieved last year. The country has been making the transition from nuclear energy to renewables and has one of the top countries in the world in terms of energy use from renewables.

The 95% production by renewables did however effect non-renewable power suppliers. Agora Energiewende's stats demonstrate that other power sources were also actively feeding into the national grid during the period of high renewable energy production - meaning more energy was being produced than consumed.

Quartz explained that 'Though gas power plants were taken offline, nuclear and coal plants can't be quickly shut down, so they went on running and had to pay to sell power into the grid for several hours, while industrial customers such as refineries and foundries earned money by consuming electricity.'