Germany’s Renewable Energy Overcapacity Is Pushing The Power Grid To The Limit

By Frank Bosse at Klimanachrichten

(Translated, edited by P. Gosselin)

“Too much electricity is also a danger.” With that headline, Germany’s “n-tv” surprised its readers on Pentecost Sunday.

Attentive readers of “Klimanachrichten” already knew this beforehand: The past holiday weekend was a stress test for our electricity grid: The sun is very high, provides a lot of energy and the demand for electricity is very low due to the holiday. Back in May, 2025, you could read here:

“The Pentecost weekend is not far away, you should hope for clouds.”

Worrying situation

n-tv asked Werner Götz, head of the transmission system operator “TransnetBW”, about the problems. His answers are both interesting and worrying.

As grid operators, we have to balance consumption and supply every second. That’s not easy with this volatility. Consumers would probably also like a more even distribution.”

The interview with Werner Götz on n.tv is definitely recommended reading.

So how did things look on Pentecost Sunday? A look at the shares of production:

EE = renewable energy share fed into grid.

Up to 74% of the power generated came from renewable energies (EE, wind + PV). This implies the use of power electronics to maintain the 50 Hz alternating current specified in the European grid. The risks here became apparent during the Spain Blackout, as we reported in detail here, among other places.

At the end of April, however, only around 65% of the blackout on the Iberian Peninsula was ultimately caused by renewable energy.

Furthermore, an unknown proportion of photovoltaics (PV) cannot be controlled centrally, which was once the intention. Perhaps the old adage that “every little helps a lot” was simply ignored. Hundreds of thousands of rooftop solar systems add up to a huge generator. Unfortunately, however, they almost all deliver at the same time and there was no controllability at the time.

Cheap Chinese imports are contributing to the situation where around 35 GW of capacity cannot be controlled. An article on this blog from January 2025 explains the figures. The figures are likely to have risen further in the meantime.
The main thing big quantity, known as “ton ideology” in planned economies like in former East Germany. The main thing was to generate a lot of kWh, with little thought given to the sense and nonsense of it all.

The “negative prices” that occur on sunny days are in fact a levy to allow excess supply to be disposed of in neighboring countries. There are no negative prices in functional markets. A producer would simply stop producing if he had to add money to the products. Electricity is different. On Pentecost Sunday, this amounted to around 1.8 million euros between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., the data comes from “Agora.” Without this “export”, the share of renewable energy would have been over 85% at the peak. This would then hardly have been manageable from a regulatory perspective.

It could have been a lot worse, as we know since the Spain blackout. Why didn’t it turn out that way? Fortunate circumstances, as a look at “Kachelmannwetter” shows heavy cloudiness over Germany on Pentecost Sunday:

Cloudiness to the rescue

At the peak of electricity generation from PV, the sky was mostly overcast in large parts of Germany last Sunday. The wind was blowing quite strongly, especially in the afternoon. If there had been a cloudless sky, that could have been a real disaster! All the experts’ hair would have stood on end.

And what was our goal? Climate protection! It can never have been real, even on Pentecost Sunday Germany produced an average of 151 g CO2/kWh. That is about a factor of 8 compared to what France achieves in this respect. Germany’s “green energy transition” also ensures that we remain one of the few “dirty children” in Europe when it comes to CO2 emissions from electricity production.

When will we put an end to this new version of “ton ideology”? Will the electricity grid have to crash due to uncooperative weather before we wake up?

Every reader can answer this question for themselves.