Bundesnetzagentur publishes 2024 electricity market data
Year of issue 2025
Date of issue 2025.01.03
The Bundesnetzagentur has today published its electricity market data for 2024. The figures are based on data taken from SMARD, the Bundesnetzagentur’s electricity and gas market data platform.
Generation and consumption
The total amount of electricity generated in 2024 was 431.7 TWh, down 4.2% on the previous year (450.5 TWh).* Renewables accounted for 59.0% (254.9 TWh) of total generation, compared to 56.0% in 2023.** The total amount of electricity generated also includes electricity that was exported. Renewables therefore represented the most important energy source for Germany’s electricity supply over the year as a whole.
Wind accounted for the largest share of total generation among all energy sources, with 25.7 TWh from offshore wind (2023: 23.5 TWh) and 111.9 TWh from onshore wind (2023: 118.8 TWh). Solar generation amounted to 63.3 TWh (2023: 55.7 TWh) and biomass 36.0 TWh (2023: 37.8 TWh). The largest increase in generation was from solar, due to above-average levels of sunshine in the summer and growth in installed capacity.
Conventional generation was down 10.9% on the previous year to a total of 176.8 TWh.
Generation from hard coal was 31.2% lower and from lignite 8.8% lower than in 2023.
Generation using natural gas was 8.6% higher at 56.9 TWh, representing a slight increase in the share of total generation to 13.2% (2023: 11.6%).
Wholesale electricity prices
The average day-ahead wholesale electricity price in 2024 was €78.51/MWh, 17.5% down on the previous year’s average of €95.18/MWh.
Negative wholesale prices were recorded in 457 out of a total of 8,784 hours in 2024, compared to 301 out of 8,760 hours in 2023. By contrast, very high prices were recorded much less often; prices above €100/MWh were recorded in just 2,296 out of 8,784 hours, compared to 4,106 out of 8,760 hours in 2023 (the total number of hours is different because 2024 was a leap year).
Cross-border electricity trade
In commercial foreign trade, Germany imported a total of 67.0 TWh (2023: 54.3 TWh) and exported 35.1 TWh (2023: 39.0 TWh). Imports were about 23.2% up and exports 10.1% down compared with 2023.
Germany has sufficient electricity generation capacity. Electricity is usually imported whenever domestic production would be more expensive. There is an interaction between supply and demand across the whole of Europe. Electricity is produced within the European interconnected system wherever it is cheapest. Germany and the other European countries can all benefit from the most favourable conditions for generation in each case.
More key figures and explanations about the electricity market in 2024 are available on SMARD.de, the Bundesnetzagentur’s electricity and gas market data platform.
Data on the platform is provided by the German transmission system operators and can be updated on the basis of new findings.
*The actual generation is the net electricity generation. It is the electricity fed into the general supply network less the electricity consumed by power plants themselves. It does not include electricity generated in the Deutsche Bahn network or within industrial networks and closed distribution networks.
**The share of total generation accounted for by renewables is calculated differently from the federal government’s target definitions for the expansion of renewable energy under the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), where the basis for calculation is gross electricity consumption. Initial calculations made by the Working Group on Renewable Energy Statistics (AGEE-Stat) at the German Environment Agency (UBA) in December 2024 put renewables’ share of gross electricity consumption at around 54%.