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Renewables Supplied 61.8 Percent of Germany's Net Public Power Generation in the First Half of 2026 as Solar Set a 43.2 TWh Record

Fraunhofer ISE data put renewables at 61.8 percent of Germany's net public electricity generation in the first half of 2026, with record solar output of 43.2 TWh, while a separate ZSW and BDEW assessment finds renewables covered a record 57.7 percent of electricity consumption.

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Overview

Renewable energy sources accounted for 61.8 percent of Germany’s net public electricity generation in the first half of 2026, according to an analysis published by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE using data from its energy-charts.info platform. Photovoltaic generation set a new record of 43.2 terawatt-hours over the six months, a 10 percent increase from 39.3 TWh a year earlier, per the same release.

A separate assessment by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), which uses a different methodology based on electricity consumption, found that renewables covered a record 57.7 percent of Germany’s electricity consumption in the first half of the year, up from 55.2 percent in the first half of 2025, as reported by pv magazine.

What We Know

  • Wind power generation rose 12.2 percent year over year in the Fraunhofer ISE accounting, with offshore wind reaching a record 14.6 TWh, up from 11.4 TWh in the first half of 2025, and onshore wind reaching 52.8 TWh, up from 48.7 TWh, according to the Fraunhofer ISE release.
  • The renewable share of Germany’s total electricity load — a measure that includes consumption and transmission losses — reached a new record of 58.5 percent, up from 55 percent, per Fraunhofer ISE.
  • Not every technology grew. Hydropower declined to 7.8 TWh, its lowest level since 2015, biomass generation decreased to 17.9 TWh, and generation from fossil fuels rose six percent to 78.6 TWh compared with the prior year, according to Fraunhofer ISE.
  • Germany imported only 1.3 TWh of electricity on balance in the first half of 2026, down from 9.6 TWh a year earlier, per Fraunhofer ISE.
  • Battery storage capacity expanded from 25.4 to 29.3 gigawatt-hours, with more large-scale battery storage systems commissioned in the first six months of the year than in the entire previous year, according to Fraunhofer ISE.
  • New photovoltaic installations totaled approximately 7 gigawatts peak in the first half — 2.1 GWp of rooftop systems under 30 kilowatts peak, 1.1 GWp in the 30-100 kWp segment, and 3.5 GWp of ground-mounted systems — bringing Germany’s total installed PV capacity to 124.9 GWp, per Fraunhofer ISE.
  • In the ZSW and BDEW accounting, gross electricity generation reached 263.5 TWh, up about 4 percent year over year, of which renewables generated 152.2 TWh. Onshore wind supplied 20.1 percent of generation, solar 19.9 percent, biomass 8.3 percent, offshore wind 5.7 percent, and hydropower 2.7 percent, as reported by pv magazine.
  • The same assessment recorded offshore wind generation up 28.3 percent year over year, onshore wind up 7 percent, solar up 3.7 percent, and hydropower down 7.7 percent on lower rainfall, while Germany installed 8.3 GW of new solar capacity (versus 7.8 GW in the first half of 2025), 2.5 GW of onshore wind (versus 2.2 GW), and 0.9 GW of offshore wind (versus 0.5 GW), per pv magazine.
  • Strong renewable generation kept exchange electricity prices in the spring largely decoupled from the rise in gas prices caused by the war in Iran, and Energy Charts project manager Leonhard Gandhi said that without the heavy renewable contribution, exchange electricity prices in April would have been 76 percent higher, according to Fraunhofer ISE.
  • Beyond Germany, photovoltaic generation across the European Union reached record levels, having increased 254 percent since 2015, per Fraunhofer ISE.

What We Don’t Know

  • Neither assessment offers a full-year projection. Second-half results will depend on weather-driven wind and solar output, and the previous ZSW/BDEW half-year record of 57.4 percent, set in the first half of 2024, was followed by a lower share in 2025, per pv magazine.
  • The Fraunhofer ISE release notes that high renewable generation created increasingly frequent hours with negative day-ahead electricity market prices and that a significant storage gap persists for managing surplus electricity during peak generation periods, but it does not quantify how many negative-price hours occurred or how much storage would be needed to close the gap, per Fraunhofer ISE.

Analysis

The two headline numbers — 61.8 percent and 57.7 percent — describe the same electricity system through different lenses. The Fraunhofer ISE figure measures the renewable share of net public electricity generation, and the institute’s load-based measure, which includes consumption and transmission losses, stands at 58.5 percent, according to the Fraunhofer ISE release. The ZSW and BDEW figure instead expresses renewable output as a share of electricity consumption, as reported by pv magazine. On both demand-side measures — Fraunhofer ISE’s load share and the ZSW and BDEW consumption share — the first half of 2026 set a record.

The German milestone lands amid a broader shift in the global power mix: in April 2026, wind and solar together generated more electricity than gas worldwide for the first month ever, as previously reported.

The policy backdrop remains contested. ZSW managing director Frithjof Staiß argued that a rising renewables share makes Germany more independent from fossil-fuel imports, while BDEW executive board chair Kerstin Andreae criticized the pace of legislation, noting that the first six months of the year had passed without draft bills for the amendments the industry expects, according to pv magazine.