Their solar deployment does successfully shave off a large portion of the the peaks of electrical demand during the the hottest part of the hottest days of the year, which makes for headlines that impress the naive. At all other times solar contribution is somewhere between small and negligible. And yes, this outcome does produce extravagantly expensive electricity.
As for the supposed shutdown of nuclear energy in Germany; Sweden has gone through the same process twice now, once after TMI-2 melted down and again after Chernobyl nailed Sweden with a heavy layer of radioactive isotopes. Initially the sound and fury of anti-nuclear activists in the minor parties in Sweden made a big splash and Sweden was supposed to decommission everything nuclear via public referendum. Eventually, as the practical reality of actually doing that weighed in the policy was set aside and nuclear now has sufficient and growing public support. Support that was apparently unaffected by Fukushima.
The same will happen with Germany; some uneconomic low-hanging fruit was shaken off the tree by Fukushima, and politically easy proclamations about the distant future have been made (similar to 10 year balanced budget plans in the US,) but as the day approaches and the reality of replacing the German nuclear base load supply with Russian gas, gigawatts of domestic coal expansion and French nuclear exports sets in the policy will probably be set aside.
Or not. Either way Germany won't be replacing its nuclear base load with solar panels, wind turbines and fictional energy storage systems in 8 years. That's pure fantasy.
