[silvestrov]

I don't think this is wishful thinking as Denmark is ahead of Germany in switching to renewables and Denmark is already in the situation you quote.

Many people completely ignore how well EU contries are interconnected and how EU is pressuring Germany to become even more well connected to other contries.

So electricity generation in EU should never be considered at country level only.

Today it is windy in Denmark. Wind mills produce 103% of current consumption, solar 33%, bio/coal 17%. Surplus is exported to Norway, Sweden, Nederlands and Germany.

During night time this often switches around and we import from those contries. Most days wind blows in Denmark during day time and not during night time, so we are extra hard hit by up-and-downs in renewable generation.

Tech for long distance transmission of electricity has also improved a lot over the past years but this is often ignored when speaking about renewables.

[mduerksen]

Lack of sun/wind in Denmark correlates strongly with lack of sun/wind in Germany and surrounding countries. The importing of electricity works precisely because the surrounding countries still have the "baseline" power plants the article dismisses so boldly.

Transmitting electricity over larger distances remains very expensive, which is why the idea of using the African sun for Europe (e.g. Desertec[1]) has stalled [2].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmcgdh_0gyo

[phicoh]

Apart from Denmark, few countries have enough wind turbines installed to power the entire country. Certainly, countries like Germany, The Netherlands, UK, don't come close. The Netherlands does come close to having enough PV to power the country during mid day on a bright sunny day.

So at the moment there is not a lot to export, and there is not of excess electricity from sun/wind to store.

The next thing is that, for example, The Netherlands needs a lot of green hydrogen for industry. So quite a bit of new wind turbine installations may go to powering that.

Germany has an other problem, building enough transport capacity within the country.

There is a big difference between transporting electricity all the way from Africa, including the question if it is smart to depend on those country for your electricity needs and transporting electricity between countries that border at the North Sea.

[silvestrov]

Current map of wind speed would disagree a lot with Denmark and Germany "correlates strongly": see https://www.windy.com/?55.670,12.530,5

Germany is a big country, so even internally in Germany there is a big difference: right now Stuttgart has 0 m/s while Sylt has 9 m/s.

[MagnumOpus]

Most wind power in Germany gets generated close to Denmark, in the northern plain and offshore in the North sea and Baltic. There are very few wind plants near Stuttgart. (There were lots of nuclear plants in Baden Wuerttemberg though - but they were switched off and not replaced by renewables.)