[2000UltraDeluxe]

Indeed, and large parts of the reason has nothing to do with geography. The same applies to Denmark and the rest of the Nordics.

Obviously solar will be decreasingly useful as you get further to the pole, but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard, and both do solar to some extent AFAIK.

[leonidasrup]

It has lot to do with geographic latitude and weather patterns. The amount of electric output per amount solar installed strongly affects the profitability of solar installation (if you don't count of government subsidies).

You get the following output on average each year

Denmark 1000 kWh/kWp

South Germany 1200 kWh/kWp

South Spain 1700 kWh/kWp

Egypt up to 2000 kWh/kWp

[Jensson]

And summer isn't when you need the power anyway, so its very inefficient since northern winters has barely any sunlight at all, its close to 0 from solar power then. In warmer countries you want power in the summer for AC during the day, so there it matches usage, but in northern countries solar isn't very useful at all.

[Jensson]

> but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard

Nordics are much further north than Canada, most Canadians live further south than Paris and Paris is a lot further south than even Denmark that is much further south than Finland.