Re: +601MW demand last year
"...how many solar panels do you need to satisy that demand ?"
At 200W/sqm, 3 million sqm worth, which is 3 square km. Even doubling that to account for gaps between panels, 6 sq km is trivial in the context of the whole of Europe (total area >10M sq km).
At $200/sqm (2023 costs are $1/W for utility-scale installations), that's $600 million, again seems like gigantic, but in the context of Europe-wide spending, ie, to service a market of over 700 million people) is not a lot.
The problem is that those bits need to be pushed 24/7/365, so you need nighttime power, so, windmills?? Even running with the absurd notion that windmills are fully operational at night year-round, you would need a similair or higher area and cost, simply to provide nighttime power. And of course specify a maximum power at about double that to allow for cloudy days and days with light wind. And add to that a gigantic (and far, far, more costly) battery farm for when there's no wind at all, and your costs (and lead times) have snowballed into territory where the supposedly far more expensive nuclear power now looks like the cheapest option.
It strikes me, in fact, that the preference of solar/wind over nuclear, in prioritising lower cost over reliability, is a reflection of the modern IT industry!