When it’s night in Germany, it’s night in the rest of Europe.
When there is no wind in Germany, there isn’t usually much more wind across Europe.
Please take some look at actual electricity generating data for Germany (see smard.de) and find out why your assumptions are not correct.
Also have a look here https://www.windy.com/?46.529,20.479,4 and look at the variation across Europe, especially if you include offshore wind.
Like a belt of solar panels around the equator? Works for Dyson Sphere Program but that's a game. As big as the US is, for CONUS the entire continent is in the dark for significant portions of the day. It doesn't get more intermittent than that!
> and you have sufficient transmission,
Well duh. And assuming zero transmission loss. Or enough resources to overcome transmission loss and still be economically viable.
Quite a bit of hand waving there.
You don’t. If your plant is properly designed, you’re absolutely immune to any extreme weather conditions.
Heck, we have nuclear-powered vehicles sent beyond our galaxy and they’re still working.
Nuclear power is literally the only form of energy we have that can work under virtually all environmental conditions.
Nuclear fission works even in vacuum.
The problem with nuclear is we can't have it until we have eliminated corruption. In that industry it can lead to a literal nuclear meltdown.
and even then just "restarting" it, is not as easy as restarting software.
When people quote $1/W for solar generation it really should be $4/W because you have to build 4x as much and then add another ... infinite amount for increasing the size of the transmission system by 4x too so that areas that have sun can transmit to areas that have none. All possible just expensive.
Remember, we're talking about a world where building renewables to 4x peak demand would be actually economical.
This works on the same principle as an insurance market: it's likely that even at 4x capacity, your local solar farm has a few cloudy days. It's highly unlikely that your entire regional grid generation falls below demand. That probability falls (super?-)exponentially in the size of the region.
Taking a step back: yes, renewable power is intermittent and you need electricity here, now. Either 1) transmit from elsewhere, 2) store locally, or 3) supplement with a stable source (nuclear / thermal). The choice simply comes down to cost (to provide a given level of reliability).
The most efficient solution is likely to do all of the above, taking local conditions into account. Adjusting for local conditions is one thing that a (well-managed) market helps tackle.