> Winds can be low for extended periods.

So can sun, but that's why we build both where that's unusual. We've got plenty of stats and data gathering on where it's reliably sunny/windy enough.

point is those projects are and were shoved in with almost complete disregrard of this data. because we're saviours of the world, almost jesuses

Can you point to large scale solar or wind projects that were shoved into places that have extended periods of low sunlight or wind?

The entire Energiewende for example.

germany is producing tons of solar energy though?

can you be more specific and give 10 examples of german solar plants that produce ~0W electricity in a year?

they might be a lot more productive than you think

Germany is producing some solar energy. This is of course indisputable.

They paid for that by selling most of their industry to China because energy costs became unbearable.

Was this the right tradeoff?

Without that solar / wind, Europe would be paying 100 million euros per day more for LNG. Electricity in Europe is expensive enough already, making it even more expensive by shunning the cheapest available form would be even harder on industry.

And if Germany did not phase out nuclear, EU would not have relied on russian LNG for so long.

But we live in an imperfect world.

Prematurely phasing out 10GW of nuclear electricity is a drop in the bucket compared to LNG usage. A mistake, but a minor one.

Axing the whole nuclear generation was a disaster.How many GW were not even planned, not to mention built in all those years? And don't try to slide out on "nuclear build-out takes too much time". It does not if there is a will.

Are you saying that they chose bad locations inside of Germany for wind and solar or that Germany doesn't have any viable locations and they shouldn't build wind and solar in Germany at all?

> Winds can be low for extended periods.

I'm curious how true this is anymore. It sure feels like as the globe heats up we're getting windier and windier.

We can analyze this issue with historical weather data, and it turns out it's tractable. Using solar + wind + batteries + non-fossil fuel turbines enables 365/24/7 "synthetic baseload", 100% renewable.

See https://model.energy/ for a web site that will solve this optimization problem for you in various places.