[sdunwoody]

Please forgive me if this is a stupid question - but is heavily investing in solar electricity a good idea in Europe considering the variation in climate throughout the year?

Energy demand is highest in the Winter, when mean monthly sunshine hours are at the lowest.

Even in Nice (the very south of France) where I assume this difference would be smaller, there's still a big gap between 347.5 mean hours in July and 139.3 mean hours in December (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice#Climate).

Surely we'd need to heavily invest in backup generation capacity that would be dormant for the vast majority of the summer then heavily in use over the winter?

Admittedly I have a very limited amount of knowledge in this area - but wouldn't wind or tidal power generation be a better bet here (well, Europe anyway)?

[mariushn]

One use case would be Air conditioning, most needed when it's sunny/hot.

[sdunwoody]

I'm not sure about France, but it's rare to have air con in the UK because the summers aren't hot enough :) I think a lot of Europe is similar in this regard (with the exception being the south).

Even if France does have a reasonable number of air con units installed, I would expect energy consumption to be higher in the winter due to shorter days etc. It would be good to see statistics though.

[Leherenn]

Air con is a bit more common, but nothing like the US.

Consumption is much higher in winter than summer (summer is actually the period of the year with the lowest consumption).

https://goo.gl/images/mdRj1r