Significantly more electricity was produced by gas-fired power plants in Germany in July than in the same month last year.

The amount of electricity generated in July 2021 was 3558 gigawatt hours, a year later it was 4036 gigawatt hours.

This is an increase of 13.5 percent, according to the Federal Network Agency's Smard electricity market data portal.

In May 2022, the amount of electricity generated was also significantly higher than in the previous year, but slightly lower in June.

If you look to 2020, the figures for all three months are again well above all values ​​for 2021 and 2022. In July 2020, for example, gas-fired power plants generated 5888 gigawatt hours of electricity.

The industry association Zukunft Gas suspects that the reason for the current plus is a sharp increase in demand for electricity from France, where numerous nuclear power plants are currently not connected to the grid, and from Switzerland, where not so much electricity can be produced from hydropower at the moment due to the drought.

Already in the second quarter, electricity exports from Germany to France had increased almost sixfold compared to the previous year.

For exports to Switzerland, the increase was even more than sixfold.

"These amounts of electricity were partly produced and exported with gas power plants," said a spokesman for the German Press Agency.

In this context, the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, spoke on the ZDF talk show "Markus Lanz" of an effect that had something to do with "neighborly solidarity", "even if it is undesirable from a gas point of view".

goals hardly attainable

The President of the Federal Network Agency believes that the targets set by the federal government for filling the gas storage facilities can hardly be achieved.

"I don't expect that we will be able to achieve the next storage targets as quickly as the first one," said Müller to the online portal t-online.

Reaching the 85 percent target is "not impossible, but very ambitious", especially by October 1st, if the heating is on before then.

"In all of our scenarios, we miss an average fill level of 95 percent on November 1," Müller continued.

"We will hardly be able to do that because some storage tanks started from a very low level." The goal of a storage tank filling of 75 percent in September was already reached early last weekend.

The Federal Ministry of Economics explained that the Gas Storage Act, which came into force at the end of April and obliges all operators in Germany to gradually fill their storage facilities, is taking effect.

Gas must also be saved in the future

With the regulation implemented by the federal government, precautions should be strengthened in view of reduced Russian gas supplies, especially with a view to this winter.

It is planned that the reservoirs will be 85 percent full by October 1st and 95 percent by November 1st.

Federal Network Agency boss Müller swore the population to save gas and energy beyond the coming months.

“It's not just about one winter, but at least two.

And the following winter could be even harder," he told t-online.

“We have to save a lot of gas for at least another year.

To put it bluntly: it will be at least two tough winters.”

In his own words, Müller considers local gas shortages to be “probable” for this winter.

"There could well be gas shortages regionally," he said.

“The restrictions would probably be temporary at first and could end again or occur several times.

In this case, we have to ensure that the gas is safely transported across the country.”