Germany's power exports rose to a new record in 2015 with an average 9.5 GW of electricity flowing out of Germany every hour, industry data from the German energy association BDEW shows.
Based on a first estimate of physical cross-border flows, Germany's power net surplus rose 47% from the previous year to 50.2 TWh.
Overall, cross-border flows amounted to 116 TWh, accounting for 21% of domestic power demand.
Physical power flows out of Germany rose 11.6% to 83.1 TWh in 2015, while flows into Germany fell 15.2% to 32.9 TWh, according to the BDEW data.
BENELUX, ALPINE REGION KEY EXPORT MARKETS
The Netherlands remains the biggest "export market" for Germany's electricity surplus with 24.1 TWh flowing across the border into the Dutch power grid, while only 0.3 TWh flowing the other way, resulting in a net deficit of 23.8 TWh, little changed from 2014, the data shows.
On average, almost 3 GW of electricity is flowing each hour from Germany into the Netherlands, equal to around a quarter of Dutch domestic power demand.
Austria follows, with a net deficit of 13.8 TWh for 2015, up 57% from 2014 as physical flows from Germany to Austria rose 21% on year to 17.4 TWh, while flows from Austria into Germany decreased 34% to 3.6 TWh, the BDEW data which solely focused on physical flows show.
However, as Austria shares a common bidding zone with Germany, actual commercial flows are even higher, but are often re-directed through so-called loop flows through the Polish and Czech power grids.
In September, European regulatory body ACER at the request of Poland asked the German and Austrian grid regulators to set up a timeline for the introduction of capacity allocations on the German-Austrian border by January next year, calling the single German/Austrian power pricing zone, Europe's most liquid power market, into question.
Switzerland also saw its balance drop with flows into Germany down 35%, but flows from Germany into the Swiss grid up 28% with a net deficit of 11.7 TWh amid nuclear outages and low hydro levels tightening the Swiss grid, the data shows.
RISING FLOWS TOWARDS THE EAST
Continued gains were registered in power flows to Poland with 10.7 TWh flowing east across the German border and virtually nothing from Poland into Germany, although those flows are purely transit flows.
In a similar way, flows into the Czech grid increased 55% to 5.9 TWh, reducing the Czech surplus to just 0.3 TWh.
Traditionally, the Czech power market was focused heavily on exporting its power surplus to Germany, but actual fundamentals inside Germany and the Czech Republic are increasingly reversing this trend amid nuclear outages in Czech and record wind production in Germany.
Flows from the Nordic region across the Danish border and the Baltic cable with Sweden also showed a different trend due the strong hydro surplus in the Nordics, which have replaced the Czech Republic as the second biggest import market for Germany with a combined surplus of 4.1 TWh, the data shows.
However, grid bottlenecks on the Danish-German interconnectors are also increasingly pose a challenge to commercial flow schedules.
Based on purely physical flows, France extended its position on top of the German import table with a 9.9 TWh French surplus, but on a commercial flow level, France has become another key export market for Germany's surplus power.
Since May, France, Benelux and Germany/Austria have moved to "flow-based market-coupling" (FBMC), maximizing commercial cross-border flows by including the transmission rights into the day-ahead spot auction.
