🎉 Grid Poet just got an upgrade! Faster data, better charts. Welcome to the new version. 🌱⚡
Grid Poet — 12 May 2026, 08:00
Strong onshore wind and diffuse solar dominate at 79% renewables, but persistent lignite and elevated prices mark a cloudy, cool May morning.
Back
Grid analysis Claude AI
At 08:00 on 12 May 2026, the German grid is generating 65.5 GW against 62.6 GW consumption, yielding a net export position of approximately 2.9 GW. Renewables supply 79.3% of generation, led by wind onshore at 21.5 GW and solar at 19.2 GW, though dense overcast (98% cloud cover, only 8 W/m² direct radiation) indicates that solar output is almost entirely diffuse-light driven and well below clear-sky potential for this hour and season. Thermal baseload remains substantial: brown coal contributes 7.3 GW and hard coal 3.0 GW, with natural gas at 3.3 GW — a conventional stack totalling 13.6 GW that reflects both contractual must-run obligations and hedging against the afternoon solar ramp-down under persistent cloud cover. The day-ahead price of 112.1 EUR/MWh is elevated for a net-export hour with nearly 80% renewables, likely driven by high gas and CO₂ reference prices and tight interconnector capacity limiting export relief.
Grid poem Claude AI
Beneath a leaden May sky the turbines churn like iron sentinels, their blades slicing a wind that carries both the promise of clean power and the sulfurous breath of coal that will not yet be silenced. The grid hums at the seam between two ages — overcast light feeding silicon fields while cooling towers exhale their ancient creed into the grey.
Generation mix
Wind onshore 33%
Wind offshore 9%
Solar 29%
Biomass 6%
Hydro 3%
Natural gas 5%
Hard coal 5%
Brown coal 11%
79%
Renewable share
27.2 GW
Wind (on + offshore)
19.2 GW
Solar
65.5 GW
Total generation
+2.9 GW
Net export
112.1 €/MWh
Day-ahead price
4.8°C / 24 km/h
Temp / Wind speed
Open-Meteo, Kassel (51.3°N 9.5°E)
98.0% / 8.0 W/m²
Cloud cover / Radiation
150
gCO₂/kWh
Image prompt
Wind onshore 21.5 GW dominates the right half of the scene as dozens of tall three-blade turbines with white tubular towers and detailed nacelles stretching across rolling green-but-cold spring fields, their rotors spinning briskly in strong wind. Solar 19.2 GW occupies the centre-right foreground as vast arrays of aluminium-framed crystalline silicon PV panels on low ground-mount racks, their surfaces reflecting only a flat grey sky with no direct sunlight. Brown coal 7.3 GW fills the left quarter as a massive lignite power station with three hyperbolic concrete cooling towers emitting thick white steam plumes drifting right in the wind, beside conveyor belts of dark brown fuel. Wind offshore 5.7 GW appears on the far-right horizon as a line of turbines standing in a sliver of grey sea visible beyond coastal marshland. Biomass 4.0 GW shows as a timber-clad combined-heat-and-power plant with a single modest stack and woodchip storage silos in the left-centre middle ground. Natural gas 3.3 GW is rendered as a compact CCGT facility with a single tall exhaust stack and a heat-recovery steam generator unit, positioned centre-left between the coal complex and the solar field. Hard coal 3.0 GW appears as a smaller coal plant with a single square cooling tower and a coal yard, adjacent to the brown coal station. Hydro 1.6 GW is suggested by a small run-of-river weir and powerhouse at a stream in the lower-left foreground. Full daytime hour — 08:00 in May — but 98% cloud cover creates flat, heavy, uniformly grey overcast light with no shadows and no sun visible; the sky is oppressive and low-hanging, conveying the elevated 112 EUR/MWh price. Temperature is a chilly 4.8 °C: spring vegetation is pale green but sparse, with bare patches; characters would wear jackets. Wind at 24 km/h bends grass, ripples puddles, and drives the cooling-tower steam plumes laterally. Painted in the style of a highly detailed 19th-century German Romantic oil painting — rich earthy tones, visible impasto brushwork, atmospheric depth and haze, dramatic yet technically precise rendering of every turbine blade, every PV module frame, every rivet on the CCGT stack. No text, no labels.
Grid data: 12 May 2026, 08:00 (Berlin time) · Generated 2026-05-12T06:20 UTC · Download image