German Wind Power Consumption Plummets 20% In First Half 2021… Coal Power Consumption Jumps 38%!

What would we do without coal?

The first half of 2021 saw a massive 20% drop in wind power consumption in Germany…while “coal power saw a renaissance.”

In the latest climate video, Die kalte Sonne cites a variety of electric utility companies and electric power trade associations concerning electric power consumption in Germany for the first half of 2021.

Here we find a number of surprises.

Image cropped from Die kalte Sonne

Wind power consumption tumbles 20%

The share of renewable energies in gross electric power consumption in the first half of 2021 fell from 50% to 43% compared to a year earlier,” Die kalte Sonne reports. “The production of onshore and offshore wind energy decreased by 20%.”

Unfavorable weather conditions

The reason for the steep drop, according to the findings, was due to unfavorable weather conditions. “This year, especially in the first quarter, the wind was particularly still and the sun output was low.”

Solar energy output on the other hand rose a modest 2%.

Coal picked up the slack

So where did all the missing electric power come from?

According to Die kalte Sonne:

Coal energy saw a renaissance. Brown coal [lignite] power plants produced 45.8 terawatt-hours of the net power – that is the power mix that comes out of the outlet.  That’s a strong increase of 37.6% compared to 2020, when only 33.6 terawatt-hours were produced.

The net production by black coal power plants also increased, by 38.9% to 20.4 terawatt-hours after 14.4 terawatt-hours in 2020.”

In total, that means total coal power rose from 48 terawatt-hours to 66.2 terawatt hours, a whopping 38% increase!




21 responses to “German Wind Power Consumption Plummets 2021 In First Half 2021… Coal Power Consumption Jumps 3821!”

  1. Graeme No.3

    I wonder if the UK is now happy about trying to get rid of nuclear and coal-fired generation?

    Perhaps a new slogan? Burning coal makes you warm.

    1. Peter Davies

      No one in UK misses coal. Few want to scrap existing old nuclear, but it costs too much to keep most of it going past its current decommissioning date. However, Hinkley Point C new nuclear from 2026 is £106/MWh, compared with the latest offshore wind contract from 2023 in 9 phases of £47-49/MWh (45% of the cost of new nuclear).

      Offshore wind is going great guns and 40 GW is committed by 2030, up from 12 GW now. That will mean 60-70% of UK electricity supply will be from wind power alone by 2030. It needs some grid changes to ensure no gas needs to be active just to stabilise the grid, when wind and solar generation is high enough that no gas is needed to meet demand. There’s a project to do this to complete by 2025. Some grid battery storage is also needed to smooth renewables generation within a day.

      1. spike55
      2. Josh

        Levelised costs do not reflect the true cost of a given energy source. The debate around financial costs ranges but it’s all academic. More important is flux-density, dispatchability and applications.

  2. John F Hultquist

    I thought the UK had gone back to technology older than wind.
    Are they not burning wood?

    Soon the wind will pick up, Germany will have a day or an hour of strong output, and the MSM will will have videos with exciting graphics.

  3. Shoki Kaneda

    Ah, reality… that killer of utopian dreams.

  4. Rafe Champion

    The wind fleet is ageing and they are losing windmills faster than they are being replaced. That process will continue and aggravate the situation during wind droughts. It is never going to get any better.

    They might survive on French nuclear power and Russian gas but forget about the energiewende.

    https://www.riteon.org.au/netzero-casualties/

    1. stewartpid

      Rafe do u have a link for the ” they are losing windmills faster than they are being replaced” …. that is a great one to have on file for the greentards / leftards!!
      Thanks,
      Stu.

      1. Peter Davies

        It isn’t true. Here’s a link.

        https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&year=2021

        Germany had a lull in wind power installations recently, but it is certainly not going backwards.

        The EEG act requires 4 GW of German wind capacity to be auctioned every year up to 2028. I don’t know whether it is enough, but it will certainly increase installed wind by 40% or more.

        1. Josh

          Nameplate capacities and actual power delivered are often two very different things with big implications for security of supply.

    2. Peter Davies

      You made that up – Germany had 63.3 GW of wind as of today, 62.5 GW end of 2020 and 60.7 GW end of 2019.

      See https://energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&year=2021 and adjust the year in the box on the RHS.

      1. Josh

        Wind power on average delivers under 20 percent of it’s nameplate capacity. It is characterised by spectacular breakdowns in power delivered (often running into several weeks) and by suddenly occurring surges in supply which endanger not only the stability of the German grid, but the European as a whole.

  5. pochas94

    I too would like to see progress toward minimizing use of fossil fuels. But blasting your economy apart is not progress, it is mindless destructiveness. Progress will require massive replacement of infrastructure, which cannot happen overnight. Irrational behavior, which is endemic in today’s society, requires that mistakes will be made and of course they will be atrociously expensive.

  6. drumphish

    Mother Nature is teaching the world a thing or two about a thing or two.

    A hard lesson to learn, can’t be avoided, unfortunately.

    In the middle of severe/extreme drought, coal-fired power plants are providing the electricity to air condition houses and buildings from here to Timbuktu.

    Solar and wind are being left in the dust.

    It is the 28th of July, so far this month there has been 1/10 of an inch of rain. 2.54 mm, not 25.4 mm.

    China and Germany stole the rain badly needed for the Great Plains of North America. It is an outrage!

    There are sloughs going dry. Lakes are at a low level, not yet dry. During the Dust Bowl, a lake fifteen miles from here went dry. It is not yet as dire.

    With no irrigation of crops up and down the Great Plains, the crop reports from the USDA would be far worse. Some of those crop reports are dismal.

    Many crops will have yields of 50 percent less. Some land areas have had better crop growing conditions. Some parts of fields of planted crops are being hayed.

    It ain’t Armageddon… yet.

    China stole the water in the Great Salt Lake and has to pay dearly for the theft. Just kidding.

    Another Aral Sea, looking that way.

    Get that mask on and get vaccinated. Do it for the kakistocrats.

    Koyaanisqatsi finally got here.

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