Assessing the impact of extraordinary weather events on solar energy production units in Germany

Achieving Germany's national climate targets requires efforts to reduce emissions in all sectors. The German Ministry for Transport (BMV) established the ‘Network of Research’ (BMV-Forschungsnetzwerk), a network of German government agencies focused on the future-oriented transformation of transport in Germany. The focus of the main topic “Renewable energies” is the assessment of renewable energy potential along the transportation infrastructure. In this main topic, Germany’s national meteorological service DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst), the Federal Highway and Transport Research Institute (BASt) and the German Centre for Rail Traffic Research at the Federal Railway Authority (DZSF/EBA) work closely together.

The transport infrastructure offers significant potential for renewable energy production. To optimize energy management, it is crucial to analyze the variability of renewable energy in Germany. In a previous study, weather situations which can possibly influence the energy production of wind, solar and water power plants were collected. Additionally, events with possible influence on the electricity transmission were taken into account. Afterwards, a simple assessment of the frequency of occurrence was carried out.

The current analysis focuses on solar energy production units since those are the most commonly used to generate renewable energy along transport infrastructure. The goal is to assess how frequent the occurrence of events like thunderstorms with hail, storms or dust effect the energy production.

Different data sets from DWD will be used to quantify the occurrence of those events for Germany overall as well as for exemplary locations with solar power plants near the transport infrastructure. Further, the occurrence of influential or destructive events will be quantified. The ratio between general occurrence and influential occurrence will then be used in a subsequent study considering climate change and the shifted occurrences of previously analyzed events.