Context:

The conservative-liberal (European "liberal"!) government first lengthened the projected service life of the German nuclear powerplants as a gift to the nuclear lobby (and possibly Siemens), then came Fukushima and Merkel did what she had done several times already: She completely gave up a cornerstone of her party's policies and made a u-turn. Now she's doing a more radical anti-nuclear power than did the red (social democrats) - GREEN Schrder government (which was in bed with big business just as all (West) German governments, and with much less style than their pre-'82 predecessors!) .


The switch to less nuclear power wasn't nearly as problematic as the scaremongering of the nuclear lobby had suggested for decades. We're still a net electricity exporter while the extremist pro-nuclear power France is a net importer AFAIK.

There is one major problem, though; the German electrical grid is compartmentalised. This is actually in part still a heritage from a Nazi law from the 1930's (the same Nazi law that made the German electrical grid more unable to cope with damaged powerplants than the Allies ever dared to dream prior to their 1945 Strategic Bombing Survey!).
Said old law created a landscape of regional monopolies (typical fascist-typical gift to big business in exchange for support), which were not much connected.


Now there's a lot talk about a need for additional very high voltage power lines, but planning and building such 'unpleasant' power lines is a slow process and some embarrassing power line failures two or three winters ago had already revealed that even the existing grid requires some overhaul (because the power corporations had pursued easy profit by neglecting maintenance).


The power plants are only the obvious surface; the practical issues are rather about the power line grid. We could have dozens of DESERTEC solar power plants in Africa right now, but what would that be good for if we cannot even transfer their output between North and South Germany?