Wind power in Germany

By the end of 2005, Germany's installed capacity of wind energy connected to the grid represented 18,300MW. The control area for transmission operator E.ON Netz GmbH included close to 7,600MW or 41% of the total installed. According to E.ON Netz's report entitled Data and Facts Relating to Wind Power in Germany (see: http://www.windaction.org/documents/11871), wind availability for 2005 was below average. This helps explain why the average wind power feed-in within E.ON's control area for that year was only 1327 MW, or 18%. The lowest feed-in for 2005 was 8MW (0.1% capacity) and occurred just after noon on May 5, 2005.

In its 2005 Wind Report (see: http://www.windaction.org/documents/461) E.ON Netz stated that as wind power capacity increased, the corresponding contribution of wind power to guaranteed capacity on the grid will fall continuously to around 4% by the year 2020. Said another way, if Germany achieves its forecast of 48,000 MW of wind by 2020, a mere 2000MW of traditional generation (coal, gas, nuclear) will be replaced by wind turbines. Given wind's fickle, unpredictable nature and the lack of viable large-scale energy storage technology, wind power will not negate the need to build more reliable power generation.