Germany's solar panels have already beaten all of 2025, with three months to spare
90.2 terawatt-hours by Sunday against 90.0 in the whole of last year. The industry calls 27 September "Solar Day", and warns that Berlin's next energy law could slow things down.
By Sunday, Germany had produced 90.2 terawatt-hours of solar power this year. In the whole of 2025 it made 90.0. The figures come from the solar industry association BSW-Solar, which uses the Energy-Charts data of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. It declared 27 September "Solar Day" to mark the moment. Our own count of the grid data shows the same picture month by month: every month since March has beaten its 2025 equivalent, and July was up 44%.
BSW-Solar says two things did it: an unusually sunny year and the steady build-out of panels on homes, business roofs and open fields. More and more battery storage is being built alongside them. The sunshine has a cost too. The Rhine at Cologne fell to a record low of 40 centimetres on Monday morning (see below).
The association used the record to push back at the government's plans. The 2027 revision of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and a new grid package are meant to steer where new capacity is built, region by region. From 2027, small systems under 25 kilowatts (mostly private rooftops) would also lose their permanent feed-in payment. "Right now we must not slow down people's and companies' willingness to invest," said managing director Carsten Körnig.