More is not always better, as the expansion of renewable energies proves

By Klimanachricten

Wind turbines are blighting Germany’s landscape and delivering very little. Image: Vernunftkraft.de

Daniel Wetzel in Die Welt (paid article) on a phenomenon: more and more plants are being put into operation, but the yield does not increase to the same extent.

The core of the report:

• The installed wind power capacity in Germany rose significantly between 2020 and 2025 (by around 14 gigawatts).

• However, the actual amount of wind electricity generated over the same period barely increased and remains at around 106 terawatt-hours per year.

• Wetzel describes this as a ‘wind power puzzle’ and discusses several possible causes:

  • Several years with weak wind conditions,

  • More frequent curtailments of wind turbines due to grid bottlenecks,

  • The expansion of wind farms at weaker inland locations,

  • So-called shading or ‘wind theft’ effects between wind turbines.

• The article argues that doubling the installed capacity does not automatically lead to a doubling of the electricity yield, and questions whether further expansion is running into physical and systemic limits.

However, the article also demonstrates very well that the thesis that wind and solar complement each other perfectly is flawed. The sunny holiday weekends in the spring of 2026 clearly showed that wind power has to be curtailed because millions of solar systems are pushing their electricity into the grid unregulated. Wetzel calls it cannibalization. This will not be solved with more power lines either—too much is too much.