ET: How renewables shape the future in Germany

What is the current state of the use of renewables in Germany? And what is the impact of renewables on the power price? Together with Energiewirthschalfliche Tagesfragen (ET) we looked into this.

At this moment, solar and wind are the primary renewable energy sources for Germany. In 2012, the German capacity of solar energy passed the 32 GW mark. Together with the growth in wind power generation, this has depressed market prices.

Negative impact renewables on power prices

In this article, we take a detailed look at how this is further going to shape future price levels. Whereas the market trades baseload and peakload products, we shift attention to the more detailed hourly price differences, reflected in hourly price forward curves (HPFCs). For example, we demonstrate that during day-time, an increase in the share of renewable production by 10 percentage points reduces power prices by 6.6%. During the night, the impact of renewables is even larger.

Report: How renewables shape the future

For this report we used fundamental modelling to develop the Hourly Price Forward Curves. Forward curve building means that the available forward market prices are transformed into a continuous and accurate curve. To read the full article:

► click here to download in English, or click here to download in German. See also the journal’s website: ET