This means that an average household would have had to pay about 130 euros less for electricity in the past twelve months. This is shown by a recent short study conducted by the energy market experts of Energy Brainpool on behalf of GP Joule. This is because electricity prices have risen significantly in recent months.
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There are many reasons for this, but the main ones are Russia's war in Ukraine and its effects on the natural gas supply, as well as the outages of French nuclear power plants. A megawatt hour on the day-ahead market in Germany cost a good 465 euros in August 2022. By comparison, a year ago, in September 2021, the price was still around 128 euros.
New 41 gigawatts of onshore solar and wind capacity in 2024
In the study, project developer GP Joule wanted to know: How would electricity prices in Germany have developed if more renewable energies had been available? The scenario: there would have been 20 gigawatts more onshore wind energy and 30 gigawatts more installed solar energy on the grid.
What impact would that have on our electricity price? According to the EEG 2023, a good 41 gigawatts of onshore solar and wind power capacity are to be added in Germany in 2024 alone, 55 gigawatts in 2026 and 59 gigawatts two years later.
The result: between September 2021 and August 2022, the higher wind and solar power capacities would have led to the electricity price being 12 to 24 per cent lower on average per month.
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For the entire period between September 2021 and August 2022, this results in an average monthly price decrease of 37 euros per megawatt hour, or by 17 per cent. "The fact that this expansion did not take place in the past years cost German electricity consumers around 19 billion euros over the year," the study states.
More green electricity can replace fossil energy
More green electricity would also be a gain for climate protection: in the assumed scenario, electricity generation from solar plants increases by 30 terawatt hours and from wind turbines by 43 terawatt hours from September 2021 to August 2022. According to the study, this would replace approximately eight terawatt hours of electricity from natural gas, 15 terawatt hours from lignite and 16 terawatt hours from hard coal. (nhp/mfo)
