Charles Rotter
Berliner Zeitung, in a piece by Flynn Jacobs drawing on Bloomberg, reports on the first Dunkelflaute of the heating season. Dunkelflaute is the German word for the dark, still weather that leaves wind turbines and solar panels with little to do and everyone else with the bill. From the article, in my translation:
The German wholesale price for electricity has risen within a few days from 13 to more than 300 euros per megawatt-hour. That is according to the news agency Bloomberg, citing data from the Epex Spot power exchange. The day-ahead price for delivery on Thursday is thus about twice the October average so far. In some evening hours, prices of more than 500 euros are even being reached. As recently as Sunday, power was trading at times for just 13 euros.
The exchange data check out, with one wrinkle. Day-ahead prices for the Germany-Luxembourg zone, as published by Energy-Charts from Bundesnetzagentur data, averaged €13.12 a megawatt-hour on Sunday, October 25, and the €13 was the day’s average, not its low. Every 15-minute slot from 2 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day cleared at three cents or less, most of them at exactly zero, so for 13 hours there was so much wind and solar power on the market that it was close to worthless, and almost nowhere to put it for later. Energy-Charts counts 34.5 gigawatt-hours of battery storage installed in all of Germany, home batteries included, which would have covered about 40 minutes of the country’s average demand during the lull that followed. Thursday, October 29, averaged €314.85, about double the €158 average for October 1 to 28, and every 15-minute slot from 5 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. cleared above €500, peaking at €574.28.
What changed was the wind. From Bloomberg’s report, as carried by the Luxembourg Times:
Wind generation in Germany, one of the region’s largest renewable power producers, is forecast to remain low through next week, with daily averages expected to stick below 7 gigawatts, according to Bloomberg forecasts. That’s less than half the average level seen so far this year.
The forecast held. Onshore and offshore wind together averaged between 3.9 and 4.8 gigawatts a day from October 29 through November 1, against about 15.4 gigawatts for 2026 so far, in Energy-Charts’ public net generation figures. On October 24 and 25 it had averaged 46.5 and 44.5 gigawatts.
Bjørn Lomborg set the two periods side by side on November 2:
The numbers are right. The 115% record was announced on October 28 by Energy-Charts, the data site run by Fraunhofer ISE, rather than by campaigners, and it was for October 24, nine days before Lomborg posted. In my translation:
New record! The daily share of renewable energy in load (=electricity consumption + grid losses) reached 114.8% on 24.10.2026. Electricity consumption could be covered 100% from renewables on average, and an additional 14.8% was exported.
https://x.com/energy_charts_d/status/2115336843386392856
Energy-Charts posted its record on the morning of October 28, by which time the day-ahead market had already priced that day at €249. Two days later, with wind under 5 gigawatts and the price at €268.62, the same account told a doubter on X, in my translation:
The Energiewende is a success story and the whole world is now betting on solar and wind. What gives you the idea that it has failed?
https://x.com/energy_charts_d/status/2116134553614229664
The record day’s average price was €30.12. The daily renewable share, which counts biomass and hydro along with wind and solar, then ran 29.5%, 30.0%, 29.2% and 30.2% from October 29 to November 1, an average of 29.7%. The day-ahead price over those four days averaged €272.70, nine times October 24.
Read the two panels together. When the green bars topped 100%, the red ones nearly disappeared, and when the green fell to 30% the red went to the top of the chart.
Berliner Zeitung says the shortfall “must be replaced mainly by gas power plants.” Gas did do much of it, about 12 gigawatts a day from October 29 to November 1 against 1.7 to 1.8 gigawatts on October 24 and 25. Lignite did as much, 12 to 13 gigawatts a day against 2.3 and 2.5, with hard coal adding around 4 more. In the Energy-Charts generation data, brown coal out-produced gas on every one of those four days. This is the country that shut its last three reactors on April 15, 2023. Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2 had a combined gross capacity of 4,291 megawatts, about what every wind turbine in Germany managed together from October 29 to November 1, and they didn’t need a breeze to do it.
Gas plants typically set the price of electricity at the times of highest demand, Reuters notes, and gas is expensive this fall. On Wednesday, October 28, the front-month Dutch TTF contract crossed €100 a megawatt-hour for the first time since December 2022. Euronews notes it stood at around €32 before the Iran war began in late February. S&P Global reported the same day that EU gas storage was 74.9% full as of October 26, the lowest for that time of year in Gas Infrastructure Europe records going back to 2011.
So a country that can run on renewables for a windy weekend still has to keep enough coal and gas on hand to carry most of the load the week after, which means paying for two power systems, one for windy days and one for all the rest, and then paying for the gas at whatever the world market is asking when the wind stops. The boosters get to celebrate the first system and leave the second off the scoreboard. The bill for the build-out is a separate matter, covered here on October 30 in Fritz Vahrenholt’s piece on the Prognos estimate of 5.7 to 6.4 trillion euros through 2045.
The day-ahead auction for Tuesday, November 3, cleared at an average of €252.85 a megawatt-hour, more than eight times the record day, and I don’t expect that one will be getting an exclamation mark.
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Price data: Bundesnetzagentur/SMARD via the Energy-Charts API, DE-LU day-ahead, CC BY 4.0. Generation and renewable share: Energy-Charts (Fraunhofer ISE), public net generation and daily renewable share of load. Daily figures are averages of 15-minute values, German time.
H/T Bjørn Lomborg
