Sure, I'm not arguing it's impossible. It's definitely a solution that can work, my take is just that it's not the most efficient solution. If you look at energy sources in terms of comparative advantage, it doesn't really make sense.

If I had to wager why Germany has so much solar energy, I'd guess it's the same reason that Vermont has so much solar energy. We have some of the most expensive energy in the country in Vermont. The only remedy that an individual household has for that is to a) reduce their energy consumption, or b) produce their own energy. For the environmentally conscious consumer, they really only have way to generate their own power. Buy solar panels.

If you do a cost-benefit analysis, it's actually a much better ROI to buy solar panels if you live in VT than if you live in AZ. That's not because the solar panels produce more energy here, it's because even if they produce half the energy of a panel in AZ, it still offsets more cost for the end-user due to our high energy prices. I'm guessing that's exactly why Germans use so much solar energy. Energy is expensive, and solar is the only way they can make their own. Whether it's efficient or not doesn't matter when it's the only game in town.

My "it's a tough sell" take assumes that the end goal is to reduce total consumption, though. It's not enough to just replace the oil and gas industry with a wind/solar/hydro industry, the end goal should be to reduce the total amount of resources required to produce energy and simultaneously reduce the total energy demand.

With that background, I stand by my statement. It's a tough sell, and the reason it's a tough sell is because solar is fundamentally not an efficient means of producing energy in Vermont. In AZ, they might be able to replace one nuclear power plant with 1,000,000 solar panels. In Vermont, though, it might take us 3,000,000 solar panels. In that scenario, we've effectively wasted 2 million solar panels worth of material for no good reason, since the output of the nuclear power plant was constant and didn't change based on climate. I'd share the same criticism of Germany. Solar panels contain heavy metals which are destructive to mine and more destructive to dispose of. Right now, most of them come from Xinjiang where they're manufactured by Uyghur Muslims in forced labor camps. We shouldn't be using them if they're not an efficient solution.

IMO it's easy to make the case "I should buy a solar panel" here, but it's really hard to make the case "Vermont should invest in solar energy". We just don't have the climate for it. There are solutions that are not only more cost effective for our state, but also fundamentally less damaging to the environment.