🎉 Grid Poet just got an upgrade! Faster data, better charts. Welcome to the new version. 🌱⚡
Grid Poet — 18 May 2026, 11:00
Solar leads at 34.5 GW under overcast skies; coal and gas backstop a 3.3 GW net import gap.
Back
Grid analysis Claude AI
Solar dominates at 34.5 GW despite 91% cloud cover, reflecting the diffuse-light performance of Germany's extensive PV fleet at midday in May; direct radiation of 188 W/m² confirms partially attenuated but still substantial insolation. Wind contributes a modest 5.9 GW combined, consistent with the light 12.1 km/h surface winds. Thermal generation remains significant: brown coal at 6.5 GW, hard coal at 4.4 GW, and gas at 4.1 GW collectively provide 15.0 GW, keeping the residual load manageable at 3.2 GW. Domestic generation falls 3.3 GW short of the 64.1 GW consumption, indicating net imports of approximately 3.3 GW, while the day-ahead price of 100.1 EUR/MWh reflects moderate thermal dispatch costs and tight supply-demand balance.
Grid poem Claude AI
Beneath a pewter sky the sun still fights, pressing golden current through a billion silicon cells. Coal towers exhale their ancient breath beside the humming fields, steadying the grid's restless pulse.
Generation mix
Wind onshore 8%
Wind offshore 1%
Solar 57%
Biomass 7%
Hydro 2%
Natural gas 7%
Hard coal 7%
Brown coal 11%
75%
Renewable share
5.8 GW
Wind (on + offshore)
34.5 GW
Solar
60.8 GW
Total generation
-3.2 GW
Net import
100.1 €/MWh
Day-ahead price
14.6°C / 12 km/h
Temp / Wind speed
Open-Meteo, Kassel (51.3°N 9.5°E)
91.0% / 188.0 W/m²
Cloud cover / Radiation
175
gCO₂/kWh
Image prompt
Solar 34.5 GW dominates the scene as vast fields of aluminium-framed crystalline silicon PV panels stretching across the entire right half and centre-right of the composition, their blue-grey surfaces reflecting diffused midday light. Brown coal 6.5 GW occupies the far left as a cluster of massive hyperbolic cooling towers with thick white-grey steam plumes drifting into overcast skies. Hard coal 4.4 GW appears just left of centre as a large power station with tall rectangular stacks and conveyor belts feeding dark fuel. Natural gas 4.1 GW sits centre-left as a compact modern CCGT facility with twin exhaust stacks and a slender vapour trail. Wind onshore 5.2 GW is rendered as a line of three-blade turbines with white lattice towers on rolling green hills in the mid-background, blades turning slowly. Wind offshore 0.7 GW appears as a few distant turbines on the far horizon. Biomass 4.2 GW is depicted as a mid-sized wood-clad plant with a domed biogas digester and short exhaust beside the solar fields. Hydro 1.3 GW is a small concrete dam with spillway visible in a valley on the far right. The sky is a heavy, 91% overcast blanket of layered stratus clouds, pewter-grey and oppressive, pressing down with a sense of high electricity prices — yet enough diffuse daylight penetrates to illuminate the landscape in flat, even midday light at 11:00 in late May. Temperature is a cool 14.6 °C: spring-green deciduous trees with full but still-fresh foliage, fields of rapeseed in pale yellow, grass lush. Light wind animates small grasses and the slow turbine blades. Style: highly detailed oil painting in the tradition of 19th-century German Romantic landscape painters — Caspar David Friedrich meets industrial realism — rich colour palette of muted greens, slate greys, and warm earth tones, visible impasto brushwork, atmospheric depth with haze on the horizon, meticulous engineering detail on every technology. No text, no labels.
Grid data: 18 May 2026, 11:00 (Berlin time) · Generated 2026-05-18T09:20 UTC · Download image