According to the data gathered on energy-charts.info, the first half of 2023 saw the lowest production of electricity by fossil fuels since 2015. With 387 TWh (31.7% of load) from conventional sources it surpassed the previous low for a first half year of 400.9 TWh (32.1%) in 2020 by nearly 14 TWh or 3.5%.
At the same time renewables provided for more power than ever with 519.3 TWh providing 42.6% of the load.
Other records for a first half year in 2023 (see the bottom of the energy-charts page):
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lowest nuclear power production
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lowest fossil peat production
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lowest load
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highest pumped hydro usage (consumption+production)
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highest offshore wind production (23.922 TWh)
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highest onshore wind production (195.399 TWh)
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highest solar power production (98.698 TWh)
This marks a notable shift towards green energy compared to the first half of 2022: renewables increased from 488.8 TWh in the first half of 2022 to 519.3 TWh in the first half this year, while fossil fuels decreased from 475.3 TWh to 387 TWh.
For the 3 hours or so of storage needed to exceed the grid penetration possible with nuclear due to its inflexibility there are individual storage production factories being constructed every few weeks that exceed the scale of the entire nuclear industry.
Then there is also thermal storage, existing hydro as dispatch, pumped hydro, w2e, and load shifting,
Then why didn’t Germany deploy it before shutting down nuclear but is still running fossil fuel plants?
Because their rollout was sabotaged by right wing morons after already comitting to replacing said nuclear with renewables.
In spite of that they are partially responsible for the renewable industry covering net new electricity growth worldwide, so you should thank them.
Because conservative politicans are corrupt, so the massive slowed down the construction of new renewables, while also accelrating the nuclear exit as much as possible. That being said, there is a for Nordlink and the massive North Sea project, namely that Norway has a lot of hydro, which can act as a battery for Germany. Norway has 85TWh in hydro storage, that is two months of German electricity consumption. Obviously that requires a lot of transport infrastructure, but offshore wind parks need power lines anyway and they are activly being worked on. Sweden also has a good bit of hydro. You can see the massive exports towards Sweden and Norway partly via Denmark already, when there is some actual overproduction.
There is some other stuff too, namely hydro in the Alps and battery storage.
I get all that and I get corruption angle, we all suffer from it.
Somebody’s profits are more important than our pocket books.
But here we are nuclear shut down, fossils burning yes again…
Just to be clear, fossil fuel electricit production is decreasing in Germany for years now. The renewable built up was fast enough for that. So it is not burning fossil fuels again, as that would imply increasing the amount of fossil fuels burned.
Right now the situation is that hard coal is too expensive, natural gas despite the Russia situation is a bit better, but not exactly great and lignite should loose money since 2019, but got lucky with the gas crisis and France massive nuclear problems. Given how fast solar is being added right now and the accelerating built up of wind, especially offshore, I would not be surprised, if Germany hits 80% renewables within the next five years.