German solar juggernaut rolls on despite tariff cuts

[AtheistCrusader]

10. I think the germans are aware of it.

But, I had assumed this inherent inefficiency was one of the reasons for the ending subsidies, but that's not the case, apparently. Entirely different economic reasons driving that.



I don't see any particular reason that wind power can't replace their nuclear power and fossil fuels, entirely, for less money than PV.

If I may speculate one ONE benefit of solar in their geographical location; daylight warms the region also coupled to latitude. If the sun is out and shining, if air conditioning is to be used to counter-act it, it will be accompanied by daylight that will also drive PV panels. So having SOME PV capacity makes sense, as some additional capacity will be needed for cooling, at the precise same time solar power is most available.

But beyond that, compared to wind power and wind power ONLY, it just seems like a bad deal, for most of Germany. Especially since it is less useful when it is most needed in the winter, for heating purposes.

Am I wrong on 'eyeballing it' or not?
Solar installations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolarGIS-Solar-map-Germany-en.png
Wind installations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windkraftanlagen_in_Deutschland.png

The wind turbines are a little more distributed from the midpoint, but I would call my characterization of the solar install patterns completely accurate.

It just kind of boggles my mind that they focused so much on PV, over wind. Or at least, this article has the appearance of such. I personally would have thought they would simply be an exporter of the panels to countries with better sunlight.