Talk:Energy in Germany

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There is a conflict between industrial costs reported here and Eurostat numbers. According to the Wiki page industrial electricity costs have been rising. Eurostat data reports that prices peaked in 2009 and have fallen each following year. About 12% in total.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language=en&pcode=ten00114

Additionally, residential prices are 3x US prices, not 4x. Current Germany residential electricity is $0.36 and July, 2013 US average was just over $0.12/kWh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.194.68.223 (talk) 02:07, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Broken reference link, the 3rd one: ^ Electricity in Germany, EIA, Accessed December 7 2008. URL is http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Germany/Electricity.html

Just passing through, not sure how the Wikipedians handle such things, but didn't want to just delete it. 76.115.3.200 (talk) 18:41, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I was wondering how the article can say only 1.6% of Germany's energy use is derived from renewables in 2008, but in the article on Renewable energy in Germany, it says that as of 2007, renewables accounted for 14% of their energy needs. This seems very discrepant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.101.224.4 (talk) 16:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

The renewable energy page says as of 2008 Germany produces 15% of its electricity from renewables, not that it produces 15% of its energy from renewables. I'm not sure that that accounts for all of the difference, but since automobiles still mostly run on gas it certainly is intuitive that factoring them in would increase the portion coming from non-renewable sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.80.42 (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Can someone find a new pie chart for the renewable energy. It is from 2009 and there has been significant change in the last three years. Solar has for example gone from 10 GW in 2009 to over 30 GW in 2012. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.238.38.12 (talk) 18:30, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Anti-nuclear bias

The table includes "Mtoe = 11.63 TWh, Prim. energy includes energy losses that are 2/3 for nuclear power", when it should be for nuclear, coal, oil, and gas boiler. Nuclear is not an exception, and should not be treated as such. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.43.54.2 (talk) 02:32, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Contradictory information

How could nuclear power have accounted for 23% of electricity production, renewables for a bit under 20%, hydro+wind for 60% of that and yet nuclear account for 11% of energy production compared to 1.5% for hydro+wind? This is not consistent unless almost all nuclear is used for things OTHER than electricity (which is not the case) or there were doublings and halvings of these various energy sources during 2009-2011 (again, not the case). One of these two sources is false. 195.46.249.229 (talk) 10:21, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

74% of Germany's power is from renewable energy

Can we get a definite inclusion of this in the article.

Is it true that 74% of Germany's power is from renewable energy or is it a blatant falsehood and the vast majority (over 2/3rds) of Germany's power comes from imported energy from nuclear and coal/gas/oil countries?

The factual statement should be included in the article rather than weasel words. 58.7.92.174 (talk) 08:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC) Sutter Cane

The share is far lower. Renewables are predominantly for electricity production, the shares of which are available at https://www.energy-charts.de/price.htm, amongst others (this is a site run by the non-for-profit reasearch Fraunhofer, with data supplied by the network operators and energy trade exchange. Any statements regarding renewable shares should in my view only refer to electricity, as that is the only part in which reliable data will be continuously available. I doubt that biofuels data is widely available (don't know any source and there is no central trading point or similar at which such data could be gathererd) Buan~dewiki (talk) 11:10, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

this article needs updating. source 1 for that claim is 404, source 2 refers to >>50% of energy coming from renewables 195.192.86.230 (talk) 16:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Who wrote this Crap?

"6 times cheaper than in Germany"... The footnoted references states that electricity in Moses Lake, Washington, next to the Hoover Dam, costs $0.03/kwh vs $0.18/kwh in Germany. The price in Moses Lake does not reflect average electric prices in the U.S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:3002:BE30:5BFF:FEDB:4C84 (talk) 03:46, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Out of date

Most of the statistics in this article are between 2 and 5 years old and need to be updated. I will tag the relevant data as such. Stidmatt (talk) 02:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Timeline

@Ita140188: I feel like the timeline showed the percentages better - the graph makes it difficult to see the percentage change each year. Can you consider reverting back? DiamondIIIXX (talk) 09:03, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@DiamondIIIXX: I changed the graph to a bar chart with values shown. Is it ok like this? I would prefer to keep the Graph template since this is the standard way to display graphs in wiki, and it's easier to maintain. --Ita140188 (talk) 11:35, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

@Ita140188: Yes, this is a lot better now DiamondIIIXX (talk) 22:12, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Description of various amounts of energy are in different (and incorrect) units.

Total energy use for Germany is given as 10,791 Petajoules. It should read petajoules per year. This is a preposterous unit to use. It is like measuring the distance to the moon in inches. This amount of energy is more properly written as 320GW. Similarly, electricity is given as 508.1 TWh/year - here a watt is stupidly written as 8760Wh/year - inflating the numbers quite unnecessarily by 8760 times. This amount of energy is more properly written as 58GW. With total energy 320GW and electricity 58GW, using the same units, you can now see straightaway that electricity use is 18.1% of total energy, showing that decarbonising electricity will make almost no difference to the total amount of energy being used in Germany. BrianAnalogue (talk) 14:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

These are standard units used in the references. They are all valid units, so their choice depends on personal preference. By the way, petajoule is a perfectly suitable unit to refer to national energy consumption (it could also be written as 10.79 exajoule). It is a multiple of the joule which is the standard unit of energy in the SI units. These units scale with prefixes, like meter and kilometer. It's the same concept you are using to refer to gigawatt as a billion watt. The text also refers to energy in 2023, so no need for per year. That number refers to a specific year. --Ita140188 (talk) 07:39, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

In the same sentence in the lede, TWh are used for one year and PJ are used for another year. We do not need RS to convert from one unit of energy to another, when they are measuring the same energy in the same context for the same country. When we have a single article, and our sources are talking about the exact same context, we should write with the same units (and use {{convert}} as needed). SamuelRiv (talk) 22:46, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

The numbers in the lead are not about the same quantity. Primary energy is given in PJ, while electricity is given in TWh. This is a very common convention in energy engineering. Of course they can be converted into the same unit, but the use of TWh for primary energy may be misleading since it is a unit commonly associated with electricity only. I think it's useful to have different units to underline the difference between primary energy and electricity which are often confused with each other (as it appears to be the case in your comment) Ita140188 (talk) 13:32, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Why do you think it is useful to measure electricity with units inflated 8740 times (1 watt becoming 8740 watt-hours per year) and total energy with units inflated 31.5 million times (1 watt becoming 31.5 million watt seconds per year)? Why would you not use plain GW for both sets of units? The German article calls 300GW total energy 9.100 petajoules per year and 58GW of electricity 508 Terawatt hours per year. Why not just state 300GW and 58GW for the two figures? You have a 3kW electric kettle and you don't call it a 26.2 megawatt hours per year kettle, because that is a quantity that means nothing, because the number has been inflated nearly 10,000 times. I am saying that inflating the power numbers by huge quantities just makes them difficult to understand. Also they do not say 9100 PJ per year. They just say 9100 PJ and this is meaningless. It is like you getting an electricity bill for 200kWh but not stating the period - was it for a week or was it for a month? If you mention watt-hours, you MUST state the period over which they are measured and not a single one of the Wikipedia articles mentions this period. In future the authors could alter the period, so changing the numbers, and we would never know. BrianAnalogue (talk) 14:13, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

You are confusing energy with power. That 3 kW tells you the kettle is able to consume 3 kW (a unit of power). The actual consumption (energy) over a year is the product of 3 times the number of hours of total operation, which may be (probably!) much less than 8760. If you use the kettle 100 hours in a year, than the consumption will be 3*100 = 300 kWh (a unit of energy). You could say the kettle consumes 300/8760 = 34 Watt (a unit of power) on average over the year, but this would be extremely misleading, as it either consumes 0 or 3000 Watt at any given time. As for the period, again, these numbers are associated with a specific year: they are the total in that year, not "per year" numbers. Ita140188 (talk) 09:24, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

I am not saying that watt hours per year is the ACTUAL energy used over the year. I saying that by saying 1 watt is 8740 watt-hours per year just inflates the number by 8740. Just 1 watt is equivalent to 8740 watt-hours per year. They are both measurements of power. One is directly power, and the other is energy per unit time, which is also power. I have multiplied 1 watt by 8740 hours per year. This is used to say that 1 watt represents an energy rate of 8740 watt-hours per year, which is a truism - of course it does. It does not tell you that this 1 watt is taken for a whole year. Saying you are travelling at 30 miles per hour does not mean you are going to drive for an hour and cover 30 miles - it is simply a measure of the instantaneous speed and similarly saying 1 watt is 8740 watt-hours per year is just an instantaneous measurement of a power level expressed as energy used over a year at that power level. So let us use units of 1 watt and not units of 8740 watt-hours per year or worse still 31.5 million watt-seconds per year. All you have done is inflated 1W to very much larger numbers gratuitously - there is no logical reason to do this. BrianAnalogue (talk) 18:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Outdated sources

I'm not seeing up to date sources, and the data here doesn't seem to line up with statistics from variable credible sources.

Most of the electricity is renewable. Oil is used for transportation but even with that data renewable is large in standing for energy. Germany has also reduced it's energy use because the population cares about being clean.

The data on this page seems to be easily misunderstood causing it to be misleading and feeding into conspiracy. I would consider the data and language you use and update your page and sources.

There are some wiki pages with these details already if you want to start there, but other sources like statistica etc are readily available with a quick search. FrankyGirl (talk) 13:16, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that sources are fairly up to date and the language in the article is clear and neutral. Most information is from the latest available full year (2023). Despite the energy transition, Germany's energy is still dominated by fossil fuels accounting for over 3/4 of total energy use. Even in electricity, fossil fuels generated 45% of electricity last year, so yes, technically most of electricity is renewable, but just barely. In any case, you are free to improve the article with reliable sources. --Ita140188 (talk) 08:00, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Electric power beneficiary

User:Nillurcheier deleted my changes with a cryptic "wrong and overdetailed" as explaination. Since his organisation is quoted in the source material, I do not doubt that something may be wrong with it. So please tell me in detail about your issue with the entry. Otherwise, it´ll be back in. Thx. Alexpl (talk) 12:52, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

There are many issues with with addition: First please wait till the year ist over, to avoid newsticker. Why report a December status? Secondly, yes Germany is trading electricity with its neighbours. This is not worth mentioning, since it is neither new nore unique. Thirdly, most of the imported electricity is generated by renewable sources, only about 20% stems from atomic power plants, mostly from France. Why overemphasising this 20%-source, this is bias and POV. and 4ly, the trading deficit is only about 5% of the overall production. What might be instead of this worth to amend is the fast progress of renewables in Germany! Nillurcheier (talk) 14:46, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

And here comes a detailed quality source: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/Strommix-Deutschland-Wie-ist-der-Anteil-erneuerbarer-Energien,strommix102.html (sorry, it is in German, the atomic share is even as low as 18%. Nillurcheier (talk) 15:01, 13 December 2024 (UTC)

I am not convinced about the quality of that source. "Bereits jetzt ist oft mehr als die Hälfte des täglich produzierten Stroms aus erneuerbaren Energiequellen. Am Donnerstag waren es etwa 21,2 Prozent. Das zeigen Zahlen des Fraunhofer ISE.". "Often" and "More than half" are exactly the formulations, not indicating a good source. Maybe all sources, including that institute of yours, should first find common ground on how much power can actually be produced by burning coal in Germany before making claims: The numbers given by both sides seem to vary by up to 30% according to newsmedia [1] - with RWE stating to have all technically operational powerplants working at full capacity, while organisations, close to the acting government*, claim companies like RWE hold back up to 30 % for presumed evil reasons. With differences like this, I have little confidence in getting any reliable data, from a single source, for 2024. Alexpl (talk) 22:22, 13 December 2024 (UTC)