The very very northern tip of Germany reaches almost as far north as the southernmost tip of the Alaskan panhandle, but most of Germany is more like mid-south Canada on a latitude basis.

Northern Germany is much more specialized into wind power, and the south is more solar intensive (though solar is more evenly spread throughout the country than Wind, thanks to ease of installation, and the fact that it still produces tonnes of electricity in the summer).

Solar should be built in Alaska, but wind and hydro is what should be actively subsidized and supported by the government. The market can take care of solar penetration in Alaska if you let it.

I find something very refreshing in this, reading from Europe where we get told "gas" is the big bad, even threatening to make condensing gas boilers illegal from time to time [0], despite over 95% of homes (in the UK) being heated by this method. I gotta be honest it's just so weird living in such energy poverty in Europe. Most of Europe doesn't heat or cool adequately, Spain and Portugal barely heat their homes in winter and boy it gets cold with 41F/5C nights. Then Germany/Switzerland refuse to use A/C even though the summers get to 95F/35C. Just a few days ago a friend told me he went to the doctor and the doctor passed out during examination from the heat.

[0]: https://www.edfenergy.com/heating/advice/uk-boiler-ban

Yes, this

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People complaining about renewal electricity production with hydro/pump dams while ignoring mountaintop removal of Appalachian mountains for coal...

As opposed to fossil fuels, which are great for ecosystems, both locally and globally?

Every time they do that you just redefine wrecking.

First it was the fish ladders. Then it was a bunch of whining about how reducing the water level variation on the river is bad (particularly illustrative because this is the exact opposite logic your ilk uses when talking stormwater). Lord knows what the complaint is these days.

Why don't you just be honest and say "no"

> If Europe can make solar work

Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? </snark>

Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without at the very least brownouts. Quite importantly, it's always renewables, not solar.

The dispatchability problem is a real pain. Pool together wind + solar + hydro and the variability in power (!) output drops to levels possible to tame with realistic grid-scale storage sizes.

I am not talking about intra-day balancing here. It's the yearly cycle that comes to bite you. In my corner of Europe, if I wanted to go completely off-grid with solar+storage I would need storage well into the mid single-digit MEGA watt-hours, for the house needs (HVAC and DHW taking the lion's share) alone. That's laughably unrealistic.

> The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain...

Yes, the southern states could probably make do with something like 3-4x overprovisioning, but that's still massive. So massive that any sort of windmill capability will outcompete any sort of COTS storage.