How much of a Danish buyer’s hours can solar, wind and hybrid cover?

Two PPAs can deliver the same number of megawatt-hours in a year and still be worth very different amounts to the same buyer. What matters is when the power arrives. A data centre that runs all night gets little from a solar park after sunset, and an office gets little from a windy Sunday. This guide shows how much of a typical Danish buyer’s consumption solar, wind and hybrid plants cover in the hour it happens, and what that means for which buyers a producer should talk to.

What hourly coverage means

Take a plant whose production over a year equals the buyer’s consumption over the same year. Hourly coverage is the share of the buyer’s consumption that falls in hours when the plant delivers power. At 100% the two shapes match perfectly. The rest the buyer has to buy in the market, and the plant sells its surplus in other hours.

This matters more than it used to. The GHG Protocol has proposed that market-based Scope 2 reporting should match renewable power to consumption hour by hour, not just over a year. If that is adopted, a company’s claim to green power will depend on the hours covered, not only on the annual total. Our guide to the 2027 climate rules goes into the detail.

Six typical buyers

Danish companies tend to use power in one of six patterns:

• Around the clock: data centres, process plants.
• Weekday daytime: offices, one-shift factories.
• Daytime, all week: retail, food production and food service.
• Evening and night: cold storage, EV charging.
• Mostly winter: heat pumps, district heating.
• Mostly summer: cooling.

One technology

Solar is a daytime and summer technology, and the figures show it. It covers 63% of a summer-heavy buyer and 55 to 56% of the daytime buyers, but only 32% of a winter-heavy buyer and 23% of one that uses power in the evening and at night.

Wind is the all-rounder. It covers 60 to 78% of most buyers and fits around-the-clock, winter-heavy and night-time consumption best. Its weak spot is the weekday office: wind does not keep office hours, so it covers only 53 to 55%.

Hybrids

Solar and wind complement each other. Calm days are often sunny, and windy days are often grey, so the mix covers more than either does alone for the daytime and summer buyers: 75% of a daytime, all-week buyer and 80% of a summer-heavy one.

A battery lifts the hybrid further. With storage, solar and wind together cover 82% of an around-the-clock buyer and 72% of an evening and night buyer, up from 49% without it. A battery next to a solar park alone also helps, from 40% to 63% for the around-the-clock buyer, but it cannot create winter production, so a winter-heavy buyer stays below 50%.

This is one reason European companies increasingly choose hybrid PPAs over pure solar, even at a higher price: the power arrives in more of the hours they actually use it.

Coverage and price go together

The hours that are hard to cover are also the hours the market pays most for. The Symbolon Barometer shows what solar and wind actually earned in each Danish price area over the last twelve months:

Solar earned about 70% of the average price and wind about 87%. For a producer this explains why a hybrid often supports a better price per MWh than solar alone: more of its power lands in hours a buyer would otherwise pay the market for. For a buyer it explains why an inexpensive solar PPA can end up covering only a third of what it uses.

How the figures are made

The production shapes come from Energinet’s hourly data for all solar parks and onshore and offshore wind in DK1 and DK2, 2023 to 2025. Each month is split into calm, average and windy days, because wind swings from day to day and one average day would make it look much steadier than it is. The six buyer patterns are standard profiles, not measured companies. Both sides are scaled to the same annual volume before they are compared.

Checked against the real hours of 2023 to 2025, the model reads 1 to 6 percentage points above the actual hourly coverage, because it works with typical days rather than every single hour. The figures are a guide to which buyers fit which plant. A buyer’s own meter data gives the exact answer.

What this means if you are selling

• Solar park: look first at daytime and summer buyers, such as retail, food and cooling. Consider a battery before you talk to around-the-clock buyers.
• Wind farm: around-the-clock, winter-heavy and night-time buyers, such as process plants, data centres, district heating and cold storage.
• Hybrid: the widest set of buyers, and the strongest case when a buyer reports hour by hour.

For how the volume structure changes who carries the gaps, read pay-as-produced vs baseload PPA.

Where Symbolon fits

Symbolon is a PPA broker for solar, wind and hybrid projects of 5–50 MW, based in Denmark. Hourly coverage is the first part of our PPA check: your project is scored hour by hour against five typical buyers in your price area, and you also get an indicative term sheet with a price and ten named buyers in Denmark who fit. Two weeks, €3,000 excl. VAT, deducted from the fee if we close a PPA for the project. Book a PPA check.