Renewable energy delivered a record of just under 56% of Germany’s electricity in the first half of 2020, according to the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).
Fraunhofer ISE said it based the findings on data available on the Energy Charts platform, indicating in February that clean power’s share of electricity supply hit 61.8%.
Renewables supplied 136.1 terrawatt-hours in the first six months of the year, compared with 125.6TWh in the same period of 2019.
In contrast, coal-fired power generation declined sharply, with the share from lignite falling to 13.7% and hard coal to just 6%.
Wind power was again the strongest contributor accounting for 30.6% of the overall mix with 75TWh produced.
This was about 11.7% above the 67.2TWh produced in the first half of 2019, Fraunhofer ISE said.
Winter storms in February helped raise wind’s share to 45% in that month, it added.
Solar delivered approximately 27.9TWh, an increase of 11.2% compared with the previous year’s 25.1TWh.
PV power systems benefited from the favourable weather conditions, which allowed more than 6TWh of electricity to be produced per month from April to June, said Fraunhofer ISE.