🎉 Grid Poet just got an upgrade! Faster data, better charts. Welcome to the new version. 🌱⚡
Grid Poet — 18 May 2026, 16:00
Diffuse solar leads at 24.4 GW under full overcast, with brown coal and gas covering a 9.9 GW net import need.
Back
Grid analysis Claude AI
Solar dominates generation at 24.4 GW despite full cloud cover, reflecting the long daylight hours and diffuse radiation still available on an overcast May afternoon. Brown coal contributes a notable 7.7 GW, supplemented by 3.5 GW of natural gas and 3.3 GW of hard coal, collectively firming a 9.9 GW gap between domestic generation and consumption. Germany is a net importer of approximately 9.9 GW this hour, consistent with moderate wind output (5.0 GW combined onshore and offshore) and the elevated day-ahead price of 114 EUR/MWh, which signals tight supply conditions across the interconnected European market. The 70.4% renewable share is respectable for an overcast day but insufficient to suppress thermal dispatch or prices.
Grid poem Claude AI
Beneath a sky of unbroken pewter, the sun fights through as a whisper on glass—twenty-four gigawatts of diffuse devotion, while brown towers exhale their ancient carbon breath to fill the gap the wind forgot. The grid stretches taut like a wire in fog, humming its price to every border it touches.
Generation mix
Wind onshore 9%
Wind offshore 1%
Solar 49%
Biomass 8%
Hydro 3%
Natural gas 7%
Hard coal 7%
Brown coal 16%
70%
Renewable share
5.0 GW
Wind (on + offshore)
24.4 GW
Solar
49.2 GW
Total generation
-9.9 GW
Net import
114.0 €/MWh
Day-ahead price
17.7°C / 12 km/h
Temp / Wind speed
Open-Meteo, Kassel (51.3°N 9.5°E)
100.0% / 142.0 W/m²
Cloud cover / Radiation
214
gCO₂/kWh
Image prompt
Solar 24.4 GW dominates the right half of the scene as vast fields of aluminium-framed crystalline silicon PV panels stretching across flat farmland under a bright but uniformly overcast white-grey sky, panels reflecting diffuse silvery light. Brown coal 7.7 GW occupies the left foreground as three massive hyperbolic cooling towers with thick white steam plumes billowing upward into the heavy cloud layer, a sprawling lignite opencast mine visible behind them. Wind onshore 4.4 GW appears as a modest row of five three-blade turbines with white nacelles on lattice-free tubular towers on a gentle ridge behind the solar fields, blades turning slowly in light wind. Biomass 4.0 GW is depicted as a mid-ground wood-chip power station with a tall rectangular stack and a stockpile of golden wood chips. Natural gas 3.5 GW is rendered as a compact CCGT plant with a single tall exhaust stack and visible heat shimmer, positioned between the cooling towers and the biomass plant. Hard coal 3.3 GW appears as a smaller conventional coal plant with a single square chimney and conveyor belts in the left middle distance. Hydro 1.3 GW is a small dam and spillway at the far right edge nestled in a wooded valley. Wind offshore 0.6 GW is hinted at as tiny turbines on the far horizon line. The time is 16:00 on an overcast May afternoon: full daylight but no direct sun, the sky is a heavy continuous blanket of 100% cloud cover, oppressive and thick, suggesting high electricity prices and atmospheric tension. The landscape is lush spring-green with fresh deciduous foliage at 17.7°C, fields of rapeseed in faint yellow visible between infrastructure. Style: highly detailed oil painting in the tradition of 19th-century German Romantic landscape painters—Caspar David Friedrich meets industrial realism—rich layered colour, visible confident brushwork, atmospheric depth and haze, meticulous engineering accuracy on every turbine nacelle, panel frame, and cooling tower curve. The mood is weighty, industrious, and measured. No text, no labels.
Grid data: 18 May 2026, 16:00 (Berlin time) · Generated 2026-05-18T14:20 UTC · Download image