Analysis of German electricity data in 2024

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/presse-und-medien/presseinformationen/2025/oeffentliche-stromerzeugung-2024-deutscher-strommix-so-sauber-wie-nie.html

Public net electricity generation in Germany reached a record share of renewable energies of 62.7 percent in 2024. Solar power generation reached a new record of 72.2 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024, and the expansion of photovoltaics also continues to exceed the federal government's targets. Since generation from lignite (-8.4 percent) and hard coal (-27.6 percent) also continued to decline sharply, the German electricity mix was lower in CO2 than ever before. The import balance rose to around 24.9 TWh. This is the result of an evaluation presented today by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. The source of the data is the energy-charts.info platform.

Wind power was again the most important source of electricity in 2024, contributing 136.4 terawatt hours (TWh) or 33 percent to public electricity generation. 2024 was therefore a weaker wind year than 2023 (139 TWh). The share of onshore wind power fell to 110.7 TWh (2023: 115.9 TWh), while offshore production was slightly above the previous year's level at 25.7 TWh (2023: 23.5 TWh). However, the expansion of wind energy continues to lag well behind plan: By November, 2.4 gigawatts (GW) had been newly built onshore, compared to 7 GW planned. The expansion of offshore facilities went somewhat better than in previous years. 0.7 GW were newly built here in 2024 (5-7 GW annually are planned until 2026 and 30 GW in total by 2030).

Photovoltaic systems generated around 72.2 TWh in 2024, of which 59.8 TWh were fed into the public grid and 12.4 TWh were used for internal consumption. Total production increased by around 10.8 TWh or 18 percent compared to the previous year. Their share of public net electricity generation was 14 percent. July 2024 was the month with the highest solar power generation at 10.3 TWh. As in 2023, photovoltaic expansion exceeded the federal government's targets in 2024: instead of the planned 13 gigawatts, 13.3 gigawatts had already been installed by November. All data for 2024 are not yet available - it is expected to be 15.9 gigawatts by the end of 2024. PV expansion in Germany is therefore still at a double-digit level.

At 21.7 TWh , hydropower was roughly at the same level as the previous year (19.1 TWh). The installed capacity of run-of-river plants is 6.4 GW. Biomass contributed 36 TWh to electricity generation, with the installed capacity remaining unchanged at 9.1 GW.

In total, renewable energies produced around 275.2 TWh of electricity in 2024, 4.4 percent more than the previous year (267 TWh). The share of renewable energies generated in Germany in the load, i.e. the electricity mix that actually comes out of the socket, was 56 percent compared to 55.3 percent in 2023.