Germany Added a Lot of Wind and Solar Power, and Its Electric Grid Became More Reliable

To hear its critics tell it, Germany’s ambitious push to switch over to renewable energy has delivered an electrical grid that’s capricious, unreliable, and prone to blackouts.  But according to data highlighted by ECO Report last week, the reality on the ground couldn’t be further from that caricature.

Specifically, the availability of electricity in Germany was lost only for an average of 15.91 minutes per customer in 2012, according to figures from the Council of European Energy Regulators.  That’s far better than the United States, which saw its electricity become unavailable for a whopping 244 minutes per customer in 2008.  Germany also did significantly better than the United Kingdom (lost 81.42 minutes per customer in 2008), the Netherlands (lost 33.7 minutes per customer) and France (lost 95.1 minutes per customer).  Of all the countries tracked, Japan and Singapore are the only two with grid reliability to match Germany’s.

And the country has actually maintained this record for several years:  2008 was the last year in Germany when the amount of minutes lost per customer breached 16.

Germany Added a Lot of Wind and Solar Power, and Its Electric Grid Became More Reliable