[yostalex]

Unfortunately, the Kombikraftwerk studies were modeled for a completely different country. Germany has become a different place over the last 12 years. The current scale of EV charging, the boom in heat pumps and data centers weren't factored in back then. In 2014, there was unlimited access to cheap Russian gas, which was considered a guaranteed grid balancer.

As for biogas and hydro, it depends on how you look at it. Betting on biogas/biomass doesn't really work at a utility scale in practice. The energy density of biomass is abysmally low. Replacing baseload generation with biogas would require converting a critical amount of arable land from food to energy production. Who is going to give that up?

There's a problem with hydro, too. Germany has no room to scale hydro generation. All the available valleys are already flooded.

[anovikov]

Electricity consumption in Germany is down from 2014 actually. And the study was about electricity system with no fossil fuels at all, and assumed no addition of hydro (or storage).