Germany's PV Generation Peaked at 23.4 Gigawatts on June 6

Germany’s PV Generation Peaked at 23.4 Gigawatts on June 6

Not a misprint. 23.4 gigawatts.

Eric Wesoff June 11, 2013

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

While the U.S. marks a record first quarter of solar installations at 723 megawatts, and California hit a record 2 gigawatts of electrical generation from PV last week -- Germany is in a somewhat different solar league.

According to SMA's cool interactive PV performance monitoring tool and my meager German skills, Germany's photovoltaic electricity production hit a record 23.4 gigawatts on the afternoon of June 6, almost 40 percent of its peak demand. According to AG Energie Bilanzen, Germany's peak electric demand is approximately 60 gigawatts. The SMA page notes that Germany had 32.92 gigawatts of installed capacity as of Feb. 28, 2013.

Paul-Frederik Bach, a longtime power planner in Denmark, claims that the penetration of renewables in Germany "has developed into a nightmare for system operators."

We have not received reports of any grid performance or reliability issues despite the solar generation milestone.