Think you'll have to rely on your sales of dessicated dihydrogen monoxide

http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

I imagine that you've seen or even been in a Passivhaus - a concept that was born in Canada & America but never took hold despite extremes of temperature that are very unusual or even unheard of in Central or Northern Europe. North America has had so many great efficiency ideas that they simply abandoned because they thought cheap oil is a right, not a privilege.

Solar thermal panels aka solar hot water, something that goes back to the late 19th century, enjoyed, pardon the pun, a brief moment in the sun after the Arab Oil Embargo and when President Carter installed some on the White House.
But because some were low quality, some were poorly installed or some customers were fleeced, they fell out of favor and only in the past few years have seen a significant deployment in the USA.
Meanwhile, since the early '80s, China, Japan, Israel, TURKEY, some parts of South America have all installed huge numbers with China breaking the 100 GWh installed base and where some complete systems can be had for just a few hundred dollars.
But because of the addition to cheap oil, petrol & electricity and the stubborn refusal to take the long view, America has wasted hundreds of billions of gallons and an unimaginable amount of coal with many deleterious & persistent effects.

And the trillions that went into the pockets of OPEC countries earned the USA almost ZERO goodwill and has cost trillions more on the military industrial complex that has helped to keep the cheap crude flowing.

Had energy efficiency, insulation, conservation been pursued as relentlessly as the chase after more horsepower or cheap electronics, North America & the world would be a much different, certainly much better place.

I think you mean "Der Speigel" ( The Mirror ). They're relatively sane by USA RightWingNut standards but they're still pretty far right of center.
That's not to say they don't unearth some fantastic scandals.
German electricity has been expensive for a long time; long before the Engergiewende was enacted or had achieved significant momentum.
And most of that is due to taxes.
Also, let's not forget that German homes are wonderfully efficient compared to the average US one - almost 4x as much. But not large enough to comfortably house a unicorn, unlike many (abandoned) ones in the Home of the Brave.

Throughout all our previous problems, we were in an environment in which we'd evolved and that includes a protective magnetosphere, which Mars lacks.
That's just one, and hardly the greatest challenge of establishing ourselves on the Red Planet.

There's still so much we have to learn about this Pale Blue Dot we call home.

Gee gosh whillickers, would it be anything like controlling a plane in turbulence, a storm or any kind of bad weather? How could we ever manage to account for all those changing variables?

Nobody gives a damn how hard you think it is; we routinely deal with situations as difficult or more so. It's a complicated world.
Can we do it better - of course. It seems that some farms are using sub-optimal spacing that hindering production by up to 20%.

But not doing it perfectly is a long way from not being able to do it routinely.
There are probably 35 large active turbine makers in the world but there used to be many more prior to the downturn.
As for wind farm management, there are companies that sell turnkey addon solutions that'll do most of the work for you.

"500 or ....blah, blah"
Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. It may be a difficult problem but it's hardly insurmountable and pales in comparison to some of the things that supercomputing tackles as a matter of cours.

You can grow crops that need spacing and don't take much water. One project is growing agave under solar panels.
Have a look at what the Japanese are doing. Also your argument implies you couldn't grow anything under trees which would come as a shock to cocoa plantantions.

There's a 4.4 MW solar farm in Texas that uses goats to keep grass & weeds under control.
I never implied that you'd get 100% benefit for both panels & plants but the idea that it's all or nothing is equally ludicrous.
Before you say it can't be done, look around for people already doing it.

The reflected light is for the grass / plants under the panels; the panels will track the sun. There are a considerable number of edible plants that prefer shade and there have been attempts at making this work in Japan & America

http://www.treehugger.com/sust...

http://www.renewableenergyworl...

That's why I think battery swap stations will become necessary & popular as EVs become commonplace.
I'm glad Tesla built the capability into the Model S and hope they keep it for the Model 3.

That's probably why they stop or slow down at 70% - too much heat buildup.

Does the Tesla's main battery charge at 12V?
But it would take a heck of a lot of power to charge in 2 minutes, on the order of a couple MW which isn't the kind of cable you want on every street corner.

Lifting the panels higher off the ground should alleviate that. And in my example, I did mention grazing.
You also get a lot of reflected light which plants are perfectly capable of using.

The fact that some arrays were done in a way that's incompatible with farming doesn't mean that it can't be done.
And a lot of "high quality farmland" in many places has been and is being used to alleviate the vast condo,housing & shopping center shortage that's been such a burden on modern society. I'll take the wind turbines & solar panels over yet-another-Walmart

Not at all. But anyone who uses F/OSS IS a member of the community and that includes companies who chose to use it in commercial products.

Congrats on winning today's "Dickhead of the Day" award.

Newsflash - the panels aren't lying on the ground and there's space inbetween and beneath. There are livestock farms where the animals happily graze among the solar installation.