BERLIN —

Renewables became Germany’s most important power source for the first time this year, according to Agora Energiewende.

Clean-energy sources met 27.7 percent of Germany’s demand in the nine months through September, topping for the first time lignite, which generated 26.3 percent, the group owned by the Mercator Foundation and European Climate Foundation said today by e-mail, citing its own calculations.

Wind power and biomass accounted for 9.5 percent and 8.1 percent of demand, respectively. Solar panels generated 6.8 percent and fed as much as 24.2 gigawatts of electricity into the grid on June 6, about the same as 20 nuclear reactors, the group said.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, is shutting reactors by 2022 and wants to replace them with a greater share of renewables and efficient fossil-fired plants. The government intends to get as much as 60 percent renewables by 2035. 

Text above copyright 2014 Bloomberg.

Agora Energiewende tracks the makeup of electricity generation in Germany every day.  The «Agorameter» below shows how much renewable energy is being generated at any given moment, and the text on the top of the chart translates to «Generating Today in GW.» Generation from conventional power plants is shown in gray, solar is in yellow, wind in blue, water in light blue and biomass in green. The pink line shows the electricity demand. 

For comparison, see our August 27, 2014 article, U.S. Renewable Electrical Generation Hits 14.3 Percent