> Solar panels in Northern Europe provide plenty of energy.

For ~9 months of the year. For winter you need some other form of production that you can turn on at demand.

For example a panel in Helsinki produces less than 1% of its nominal output in the darkest months of winter.

edit: Just go and look at https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market-information/sol... if you check December of 2021 you can see that the avg output was ~2MWh/h with solar 395MW of capacity installed at the end of 2021.

That's why we have wind energy in Germany. The wind is mostly strong in the winter and the sun in summer. Soon we will have energy from storage (hydrogen, thermal, and some batteries), too.

That is why I took issue in you saying "northern europe". Solar might work in Germany but that does not help me living in Finland (more like actively hurt by taking government subsidies)