Solar energy in Germany, as much as nukes?
If you live in the desert, you can save on air conditioning in summer by running it off of the sunshine that's causing it. In California, and much or the Middle East, I suppose the same applies. But at night, in winter, it isn't quite as effective. $0.54/kwh -- Surely you mean the worst example of how a nation shut down its nukes? How many thousand megawatts of capacity did they shut down? How many thousand megawatts of coal and gas burning?
In France, the highest rate for energy per kWh is about $0.18, plus a standing annual charge of around a hundred Euros, depending upon how big the customer's maximum power demand is, in kW. There is in fact a nuclear renewable -- no, two technologies whereby nuclear energy resources can be made both renewable and sustainable. You can breed fissile plutonium from non-fissile U-238, or fissile U-233 from thorium, Th-232. Nuclear reactors are already reliable, and so much cleaner than coal that only those lamentably ignorant of chemistry, physics, and the actual data would shut down nuclear before coal.
The fact is, that wind turbines require "spinning reserve" for when the wind drops even 5%, and in the USA and no doubt elsewhere, that is supplied by gas turbines that are constantly burning just to keep spinning, and opening a throttle serves to supply the increased demand. The power of the wind, and therefore of wind turbines, is proporrtional to the cube of the wind speed. If you live in California, and Paul kangas succeeds in achieving 100% solar power plants, I recommend you buy a VERY large battery backup for your refrigerator and freezer. Don't run for governor, it only took a mild winter for the recall of Governor Davis, who was blamed for the wildly overpriced peak demand capacity that was caused by the absence of snow behind the hydroelectric dams.
A gigawatt year of electric energy from fissile uranium or plutonium requires less than a ton of the fissile isotope. The same quantity of energy from coal or hydrocarbons requires about a million tons. If it's coal, that actually releases several tons of uranium and thorium oxides! Probably half of that goes freely up the smokestacks as particulates.
To provide a gigawatt-year of energy from a fixed field of photovoltaic cells, in a permanently cloudless sky, you'd need a capacity of 3000 MW. Two gigawatts if they rotate to follow the sun. But in neither case do they keep the lights on at night.
