Europe in general will have trouble in a solar-powered future, though. Energy intensive industry will migrate to the cheap energy closer to the equator.
* that would mean 17.5MW/sq km. So yes, better than GP figure. No, still not usable (improvement of only factor 4.5).
EDIT: Quick calculation based on numbers here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#/medi... gives me solar utilization factor of 9.5 for Germany in 2016.
Also lots of wind parks are off shore where there’s less vegetation and hills to slow down wind.
And 2249 TWh / 8 GWh = 281,125
>Also lots of wind parks are off shore where there’s less vegetation and hills to slow down wind.
They're more expensive to construct and tear down after. They do generate more power, on average, but in these calculations with average it would only give you a ~20% advantage.
An average 3 MW wind turbine will generate about 6 GWh of energy per year. It's estimated that wind farms can produce around 4 MW per square kilometer, so let's go with around 8 GWh per sqkm.
In 2014 the UK used about 302 TWh of electricity (out of a total energy usage of 2249 TWh). To match the 302 TWh of electricity with these wind turbines you'd need wind farms covering 37,750 square kilometers. To cover the UK's total energy usage, you'd need an area greater than the surface area of the UK to be covered in wind farms.
These are back of the envelope calculations, but they do point out the problem rather well.