After wind power, photovoltaics (PV) have the second largest share of renewable electricity production in Germany. The installed capacity in the country has grown to 54 gigawatts (as of the end of 2020).
In the responsibility area of 50Hertz there is a large number of PV installations and the largest number of ground-mounted PV installations in all of the four German control areas. Nevertheless, regional consumers cannot necessarily always directly accept the electricity generated during those sunshine hours. As a result, much excess ‘green power’ is fed into our transmission grid depending on the weather conditions and the time of day, and transported to the major industrial and consumption centres in southern and western Germany.