16 Nov. 2022: Doing research in Renewable Energies using the internet in November 2022 is very complicated, since many agencies or news now work in this field. We prefer to present the calculations of a scientist on the feasibility of supplying Germany with renewable energies. His calculation is based on a graphic of energy consumption by sector in
2021 in TWh:
With 1946 TWh almost exactly 2000 TWh was the consumption in 2021 in Germany. At the same time, around 120 TWh were probably generated by wind turbines and around 40 TWh by solar cells. After all, almost 40 TWh came from biogas (estimated - in 2017 it was 32 TWh). Then we still have hydropower with about 20 TWh.
So from 2000 TWh approx. 220 TWh are covered so far, i.e. 10%. There's still a decent gap there. Of course, one can argue that e-cars will eventually spread further etc., so I assume a flat-rate saving of 500 TWh. Then we have 1500 TWh demand and 220 TWh yield. Let's round it up very roughly, which is 1000 TWh, which is missing, and if we want to cover that with solar cells and calculate with the usual 1000 hours of peak power, we need 1 TW of additional peak power. 22 GW area is needed with 20% efficiency: 1 TW / 1000 W/m² /20%=5 Gm². So 5000 km² is needed (PV preferably mounted on roof surfaces), which corresponds to about twice the area of Saarland.
