Gross electricity generation · Glossary

Gross electricity generation is the total electrical work that a generation unit produces at the terminals of its generators. The plant's own consumption has not yet been deducted. This is also how official statistics define it. The figure therefore also includes the electricity that a power plant itself needs for its operation. This includes, for example, pumps, fans, coal mills, conveyor belts, cooling, flue gas cleaning, control systems and other auxiliary units. Like other electricity quantities, gross electricity generation is measured in kilowatt hours, megawatt hours or terawatt hours. In energy statistics, large quantities are often also stated in billions of kilowatt hours, which corresponds to terawatt hours.

Gross electricity generation is thus a technical generation figure at the beginning of the supply chain. It does not yet say how much electricity is actually fed into the public grid, delivered to final consumers or sold on the market. This is because part of the energy generated is consumed in the power plant itself. Only after this own consumption is deducted do we arrive at net electricity generation. The German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) also uses the term for Germany as a whole. There it denotes the total quantity of electricity generated domestically, measured at the generator terminal before feed-in to the grid.

Distinction from net electricity generation and feed-in

Gross and net electricity generation are most often confused. Gross electricity generation is generation before deduction of the plant's own consumption, while net electricity generation is the quantity after it. According to the official definition, own consumption comprises the energy needed to sustain the plant's production process. Electricity obtained from third parties is not included. A simplified worked example: a power plant generates 1,000 megawatt hours gross and consumes 70 megawatt hours of this itself. That leaves 930 megawatt hours net. The share of 7 percent is only an example. How high own consumption really is depends heavily on plant type, fuel and mode of operation.

Grid feed-in is also not always equal to net electricity generation. A plant may supply part of its net electricity directly on site, for example in an industrial park or as self-consumption in the case of a rooftop photovoltaic system. In addition, transformer and line losses arise between the generator and the grid. Metering concepts, self-supply, storage or several plants behind a common grid connection point can likewise cause statistical net generation and measured feed-in to differ. For market balancing, grid operation and billing, other measuring points therefore usually matter than for energy statistics overviews.

Gross electricity generation must also be distinguished from electricity consumption. The latter describes how households, commerce, industry, transport or public institutions use electrical energy. Between generation and consumption lie the power plants' own consumption, grid losses, storage losses, exports, imports and statistical delimitations. A sister figure is gross electricity consumption. In simplified terms, it results from gross electricity generation plus the balance of electricity imports and exports. It is the reference figure for the statutory expansion path of renewable energies in Germany. High gross electricity generation therefore does not automatically mean a correspondingly high domestic final consumption.

Why auxiliary power demand plays a role of its own

The auxiliary power demand of a power plant is not a statistical side issue but part of the technical functioning of generation. Statistics describe it as the electrical work that a power plant's ancillary and auxiliary systems need for operation. Thermal power plants in particular require many ancillary units for fuel to become usable electricity. In coal-fired power plants, electricity is used, for example, for fuel preparation, air and flue gas handling, cooling water pumps and environmental technology. Nuclear and gas-fired power plants also have auxiliary power demand, though with different shares and causes.

For wind and photovoltaic systems, auxiliary power demand is usually significantly smaller. But there too, losses and auxiliary consumption arise, for example from control systems, rotor blade pitch adjustment, heating or cooling of individual components, and from transformers. For photovoltaics, in practice the alternating-current generation after the inverter is usually considered. The theoretical direct-current production of the modules is generally not regarded as gross electricity generation in the usual energy-statistical sense. How such figures become visible depends on the statistics, the metering concept and the type of plant. For small plants, own consumption is in some cases only estimated statistically.

The term thus shows that electricity generation itself requires energy. In fossil and nuclear power plants, auxiliary power demand is closely linked to the conversion of fuel heat into electrical energy. In renewable plants, conversion losses, availability, curtailment and connection concepts come more into focus. Gross electricity generation does not explain these differences. But it does define the measuring point from which it is calculated.

Orders of magnitude in Germany

According to the annual report of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen, gross electricity generation in Germany in 2025 was around 509.2 billion kilowatt hours, i.e. just over 509 terawatt hours. That was 1.2 percent more than in the previous year. Renewable energies accounted for 57.3 percent of this, with natural gas following at 17 percent. At around 528.4 billion kilowatt hours, gross electricity consumption was higher than gross electricity generation. In 2025, Germany was a net electricity importer for the third time in a row. The share of renewables in gross electricity consumption was 55.2 percent, slightly below their share in generation. This shows how strongly the chosen reference figure influences a ratio.

How large the difference between gross and net is can be seen from the BDEW electricity balance for 2025. It shows the own consumption of power plants and electricity generation facilities at around 23 billion kilowatt hours and net electricity generation at around 476 billion kilowatt hours. Calculated across the entire power plant fleet, this corresponds to own consumption of roughly 4 to 5 percent of gross generation. For individual thermal plants the share can be considerably higher, for wind and solar plants considerably lower. The totals in different publications deviate slightly from one another depending on the data status and delimitation.

Significance for statistics and system comparisons

In energy balances, gross electricity generation usually represents total domestic electricity production by energy source. It shows how much electricity comes from lignite, hard coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, wind energy, photovoltaics, hydropower, biomass or other sources before power-plant-internal consumption is deducted. For long time series this is useful because the production of all plants is recorded at a uniform measuring point.

For many practical questions, however, net electricity generation is closer to supply. Grid operators need to know what capacity and quantity of energy is actually available after auxiliary power demand is deducted. Suppliers and balancing group managers work with fed-in and withdrawn quantities. On electricity markets, it is not the entire generator output that is traded, but the quantity that can be delivered under technical and balancing rules. Anyone who understands gross electricity generation as the available quantity of electricity overestimates in particular the contribution of plants with high auxiliary power demand.

For indicators relating to emissions, too, the reference figure changes the message. If a power plant's emissions are divided by gross electricity generation, the result is a lower value per kilowatt hour than when net electricity generation is used as the reference. For the question of how many greenhouse gases arise per kilowatt hour actually usable, the net perspective is usually more meaningful. In technical efficiency analyses, by contrast, the gross figure can be useful when the internal conversion process is the focus. In any comparison, it should therefore be stated whether gross or net figures were used.

Storage, imports and the limits of the indicator

For storage, a further distinction is necessary. A pumped-storage power plant generates electricity in turbine mode and can therefore appear in statistics as an electricity producer. However, the stored energy comes from electricity that was previously consumed for pumping. Generation from pumped storage is therefore not an additional primary source like wind, sun or fuel, but shifts energy over time. Whether and how pumped-storage generation is included in a total depends on the respective statistics. To assess a storage facility, charging energy, discharging energy and losses must be considered together.

Gross electricity generation also does not reflect international electricity flows. A country can generate a lot of electricity and still import at certain hours, because consumption, power plant availability, weather, grid bottlenecks and market prices diverge in time. Conversely, high renewable generation can lead to exports or curtailment if grid capacity, demand or flexibility are insufficient. Gross electricity generation is an annual or monthly quantity. It says nothing complete about temporal coverage, power, residual load or security of supply.

For this reason, gross electricity generation cannot be equated with firm capacity either. One terawatt hour from wind energy and one terawatt hour from a gas-fired power plant are equal in size as quantities of energy. For grid operation, however, it also matters at which hours the output is available, how well it can be forecast and controlled, and what the grid situation is. Gross electricity generation describes the quantity of energy generated over a period, not reliability at a specific point in time.

Typical misinterpretations

Reading gross electricity generation as "electricity produced for consumers": this leaves out the auxiliary power demand of the generation plants and further losses up to the point of use. Especially in comparisons between energy sources, this leads to wrong conclusions, because conventional power plants and renewable plants have very different structures of auxiliary demand and losses.
Mixing up balance figures: if gross electricity generation, gross electricity consumption, net electricity generation and final consumption are blended together, gaps or surpluses appear larger or smaller than they are within the respective system boundary. This also applies to shares of renewable energies: their share in gross electricity generation is something different from their share in gross electricity consumption.
Using generation quantity as a planning target for electrification: when heat pumps, electric vehicles or electric industrial processes increase electricity demand, reference is often made to future generation quantities. Gross electricity generation is not sufficient as a target figure for this. What is needed is electricity that is available at the right time, can be transported via the grid and actually arrives after auxiliary power demand and losses.

Gross electricity generation is thus the quantity of electricity at the beginning of the electrical supply chain, measured at the generator terminals before the plant's own consumption. The term is precise as long as its system boundary is respected. For statements about available electricity quantities, market deliveries, consumption, emissions or security of supply, further figures must be added.

Sources

Qualitätsbericht Jahreserhebung über Elektrizitäts- und Wärmeerzeugung im Verarbeitenden Gewerbe, im Bergbau und in der Gewinnung von Steinen und Erden — Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis); 2025. Abschnitt Begriffsdefinitionen: Bruttostromerzeugung, Nettostromerzeugung, Eigenverbrauch
Glossar: Bruttostromerzeugung — Umweltbundesamt; unbekannt. Glossareintrag Bruttostromerzeugung
AG Energiebilanzen veröffentlicht Jahresbericht — Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen e. V.; 2026 (Jahresbericht für 2025, Stand Juli 2026). Pressemitteilung zum Jahresbericht 2025, Abschnitt Strom
Die Energieversorgung 2025 – Update — BDEW Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft e. V.; 2026 (vorläufige Daten für 2025). Strombilanz-Tabelle: Eigenverbrauch der Kraftwerke und Stromerzeugungsanlagen, Nettostromerzeugung
Stromerzeugung der Kraftwerke der allgemeinen Versorgung – Definitionen — Thüringer Landesamt für Statistik; unbekannt. Definitionen Elektrizitätserzeugung, Bruttostromerzeugung, Eigenverbrauch

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Edited by eCMS on 11.11.2026 16:29