Power prices fall as German generation turns almost 60% renewable

Power prices fell in Germany last year as nearly 60% of the country’s electricity generation came from renewable sources, the federal grids agency (BNetzA) said.

The wholesale electricity price in the day-ahead market averaged €78.51 ($81.29) per megawatt hour last year, a 17.5% drop from 2023 when the average still was €95.18/MWh. While lower gas prices last year helped, the continued expansion of green power likely also pushed power prices down.

Overall net generation (excluding power plants’ own consumption) fed into the grid decreased by 4.2% to 431.7 terawatt hours, with renewable energy sources accounting for 59% of that, or 254.9TWh. The percentage was up from 56% a year earlier.

That should not be confused with the share of renewable energies in gross electricity consumption, which according to preliminary figures by the federal environment agency reached 54% last year.

Renewable energies thus continued to be the most important energy source for electricity supply in Germany throughout the year.

Wind turbines contributed the highest share of all energy sources to total generation, with 6% (25.7TWh) coming from offshore wind, and 25.9% (111.9TWh) from onshore plants.

Biomass accounted for another 8.8% of net generation.

Fossil generation, meanwhile, mostly went down, with hard coal plunging 31.2% and lignite generating 8.8% less than in 2023. Power generation from fossil gas, however, rose by 8.6% to a share of 13.2%.

While average power prices went down, there were 457 hours in the year when wholesale prices went negative.

Germany last year imported 67TWh of power, while it exported only 35.1TWh, making it a net importer of electricity in the year – the first after it switched off its last nuclear reactors.

The BNetzA stressed, though, that the country has sufficient electricity generation capacity, but usually imported power at times when domestic production would be more expensive.