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The past year has also brought unexpected upheavals in the field of energy. With the introduction of measures against the spread of the new coronavirus, electricity consumption fell by almost a tenth before it started to rise again and the decline for the third quarter stabilized at 1.8%. At the same time, the autumn tightening of the measures did not bring any significant decline; the year-on-year difference in consumption in the fourth quarter fell further to a mere percentage. Data from Amper Meteo, which deals with weather forecasts for the energy sector, also show interesting developments in the production of energy from renewable sources (RES).

Unprecedented fluctuating weather during 2020 added many wrinkles to the forehead of "green" energy producers, especially in the first half of the year, especially for hydropower operators. As a result of the exceptionally dry and warm winter, electricity production from water sources fell by 37.5% year-on-year in the first quarter, before the situation reversed with record rainfall in July. On 23 October 2020, the volume of electricity produced from hydroelectric sources since the beginning of the year equaled the total production for 2019, and finally 11.5% more electricity was produced last year than in the previous year.

Last year, the production of energy from wind power plants was only 1.2% or 8 GWh lower year-on-year than in 2019. In the autumn months, this difference was much more pronounced, amounting to almost ten percent. However, the end of the year was windier than expected, so that production from wind power plants increased by 13.2% year-on-year compared to December 2019.

Compared to 2019, the production of electricity from photovoltaic power plants also decreased last year, by a total of 5.3% and 122 GWh, respectively. The unexpectedly high decline in production occurred in the summer months, by about one-eighth year-on-year. "The biggest relative difference was in December, by 38%. However, in the last month of the year, production is generally low for obvious reasons. Photovoltaic panels produced the least electricity on December 3, only 137.5 MWh, due to cloudy skies and snow on the panels, ”adds Milan Šálek, the main meteorologist of Amper Meteo.