Press / Newsroom

In 2025, the share of renewables in Germany’s net public electricity generation amounted to 55.9 percent, as in the previous year. Wind power took first place as the strongest net electricity producer, followed by photovoltaics, which increased its production by 21 percent in 2025 and overtook lignite for the first time. The share of electricity generation from fossil fuels stagnated in 2025, with the decline in lignite-based electricity generation being offset by rising natural gas consumption. The share of imports in the electricity mix fell in 2025 compared to the previous year. This analysis is based on the energy-charts.info data platform of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, which provides interactive graphs on electricity generation for the whole of Europe.

Dr. Moritz Kroll, team leader of Battery Data Science at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, will establish the independent junior research group NADINE (Battery Data Science) at the University of Freiburg as part of the “BattFutur – Junior Research Groups in Battery Research” program. The interdisciplinary project will start in February 2026 at INATECH in the Faculty of Engineering and will run for five years. The focus will be on data-based methods for non-destructive quality control of battery cells that reduce the consumption of critical resources in manufacturing.

Until 2009, German PV system owners hardly used any of the electricity they generated themselves, as the feed-in tariff for photovoltaic electricity was higher than the price of electricity purchased from the grid. Since this ratio has reversed and sector coupling has expanded the possibilities for use, the economically motivated self-consumption of solar power in Germany has risen sharply. Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have now developed the first method for quantifying PV self-consumption based on data from the market master data register and transmission system operators. They published their findings in an analysis for the German Federal Environment Agency.

Large capacities of fast-charging infrastructure are being built to electrify the transport sector. Stations with megawatt fast-charging points for heavy-duty vehicles on high-traffic routes require charging capacities equivalent to the power requirements of a small town (30 MW). The “ReNew – Resilient Fast Charging Parks for Heavy Goods Vehicles” project aims to develop system concepts for megawatt charging stations for the first time that pursue a holistic and technically and economically scalable approach. The consortium will develop and build the central medium-voltage components and test them on a laboratory scale. At the heart of the innovation is local energy distribution with direct current at medium-voltage level.

For the energy transition to be successful, 400 GWP of photovoltaic (PV) capacity must be installed in Germany alone by 2045. This goes hand in hand with an enormous demand for valuable resources. In the “SeVen” project, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE aim to make material-intensive components more efficient and cost-effective through innovative medium-voltage technology.