Source: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; data from: Federal Network Agency

There are roughly 525,600 minutes in a year. Last year, on average, there were about twelve minutes in which people living in Germany lacked electricity. The precise figure was 12 minutes and 17 seconds. That is the shortest average interruption to supply ever seen in Germany. The figure for 2013 was 15 minutes and 19 seconds - approximately three minutes more. So we can see that the high proportion of renewable energy in electricity generation in Germany - an impressive 27.8% in 2014, or nearly a third - hasn’t made our electricity supply any less reliable. Never before has the electricity supply in Germany been so dependable.

The data are based on figures from the national regulatory authority, the Federal Network Agency. Jochen Homann, the Agency’s President, explains: "This is the best figure we have seen since the Federal Network Agency began systematically registering the quality of the electricity supply in 2006. The main reason for the improvement in the quality of supply was that there were only a few extreme weather events in 2014. Nor are there any signs that the energy transition and the growing volume of distributed electricity generation are impacting on the quality of supply."

Federal Network Agency registers the duration of blackouts

Every summer the Federal Network Agency, publishes the "SAIDI" figures for Germany. SAIDI stands for "System Average Interruption Duration Index". The index shows the average duration of interruption to supply for each connected consumer in the low- and medium-voltage grid. The data are supplied by the grid system operators. They tell the Federal Network Agency when, why and how long the supply was interrupted.

SAIDI records all unscheduled interruptions which last longer than three minutes. There are many different reasons why the supply can be interrupted. For example, mistakes by construction workers or accidents can interrupt the supply. The index does not include blackouts due to force majeure, such as natural disasters, or scheduled interruptions.

Germany also holds up well in the international comparison

The reliability of Germany’s electricity supply is also very high when compared with other European countries. Comparative figures are available for 2013. In that year, the average length of a blackout was 23 minutes in the Netherlands, nearly 55 minutes in Britain, and around 68 minutes in France. The lights only went out more infrequently in two countries than in Germany: in Denmark, the figure was 11 minutes and 15 seconds, and in Sweden it was 15 minutes.