TWENTY NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS - Fifty Percent of the nation's energy needs.

[XemaSab]

6. The news is good, but it isn't that good

This amount of electricity is equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity. It provided a third of the countries [sic] energy needs during a work day on Friday, and half of its needs on Saturday when offices and factories were closed.

Critics of renewable energy have argued that it is not reliable enough and an industrialised nation can never produce enough of it to meet its needs. But German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has set out to prove that it is possible, and at the moment the country gets 20 percent of its annual overall electricity from renewables, and four percent from the sun alone.

This has been costly however, as a 2012 Environment Ministry report showed that German customers pay an extra four billion euros per year on top of their electricity bills to support solar power.

http://www.euronews.com/2012/05/27/germany-breaks-solar-energy-record/

Variable energy sources such as wind and solar require huge amounts of hydro or natural gas capacity to buffer the fluctuations in power.