The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) has developed an app that displays the current share of renewables in the net public electricity generation for 12 European countries. It can also show the day-ahead electricity price for 34 European countries, allowing consumers to adjust their electricity consumption with the renewable share accordingly.

The app, PowerSignal, uses a ‘traffic light’ that varies its color based on the relationship between the current renewable share and the average over the last five years for the respective month. For instance, if the current share is 10% below this average, the light is red, and if it is 10% above, it turns green. Yellow signifies all the values in between.

New electricity data is available every 15 minutes and is usually updated hourly to show the current forecast. The following day’s forecasts are available in the previous evening from 7 pm.

‘Renewable resources, and thus a green electricity supply, are weather-dependent. In order to minimize the need for electricity storage in a renewable-based energy system, it makes sense to adapt electricity consumption to the supply,” said Bruno Burger, Senior Scientist at Fraunhofer ISE, whose team developed the app.

Leonhard Probst from the Energy Charts team added, “Unlike other apps, our PowerSignal app does not offer a financial incentive. It is primarily intended to maximize renewable electricity consumption and bring more transparency to electricity consumption. By using electricity at times when there is a high supply of renewable electricity, consumers can actively participate in the energy transition themselves.”

With the share of renewable energies in net public electricity generation steadily increasing, the share of renewables in the global energy mix is expected to rise from 29% in 2022 to 35% in 2025, according to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

As of 2021, the share of renewable energy in the EU’s total energy share consumption stood at 21.8%. In October 2023, the European Parliament voted to boost the share of renewable energy to 42.5% by 2030.