It would be even more better if they didn't close their nuclear power plants. I am still shocked how sad and untimely this decision had been.

It wouldn't change much in this map, German nuclear plants always had cooling issues in hot summer. No open-loop cooling to prevent water from getting too hot for the fish, and plants capable of closed loop cooling eventually get issues with the river's water level. France has the same issues right now with their nuclear plants.

Winter is of course a different issue

You should see how much they’ve invested in solar to hit that mark, and how much capacity is being unutilized

Top utilization of solar was approximately 25% of the installed base today

At the same time, 49% of nuclear in France is being used today and 62% of nuclear in the UK

So, it's "bad" but not everything is used 100% all the time

The thing is, on a perfect day, Germany has enough solar capacity to fulfill almost all of its electricity needs.

But that perfect day is rare, largely because of Germany’s climate.

So you have a situation where you have to essentially install over 100% of your needs in solar. You’re overspending for suboptimum results.

yes you overbuild, but solar is still one of the cheapest girls is electricity even when you consider the necessary overbuilding.

Maybe you could show us with a source?

This is a good one:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-failure-...

Essentially, there’s plenty of installed solar capacity but most of it can’t be utilized fully unless its a perfect day. So you have to essentially rely on backup and keep installing more and more solar capacity beyond your needs because those perfect solar days are so rare in Germany.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever spent even two days in Germany - the country isn’t exactly brimming with sunlight.

Your article says Germany started off well but politicians were too scared to continue and other nations caught up.

In particular they dragged their heels on ICE to EV transition, which I agree with.

Luckily they shifted from a conservative towards a green government and all that stuff is moving forward again.

> Politicians have ignored other elements, like industrial production, building efficiency and, especially, vehicle traffic. Involving those areas and coming up with an overarching concept, that's the hard part that must now be addressed. And it will determine whether Germany will once again become a model of sustainable economic production or whether the entire experiment will end in failure.

Or you could tell us.

And how much all that solar equipment garbage is going to be disposed soon.