Germany already imports electricity from France[1] -- during peak hours. The capacity your source cites is the optimistic variant. The industry simply can't run on the somewhat fickle solar and wind energy, so energy has to be imported. Of course there are ways around that -- energy storage of various kind, or vastly excess capacity, but those raise costs substantially. And that's the core of the problem: the green power companies shift the costs elsewhere, out of public sight. The sleight of hand works, because the numbers -- the optimistic capacity -- are right.
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[1] sorry, no link here. They explained it during lecture in Greifswald's powerplant.
* there is an energy market. Energy is traded for different prices at different times. Sometimes energy from France is cheap (well, it is government subsidized anyway) - sometimes not. For example the Nuclear Power Plants of France are idling a lot on the weekend, when the demand is low.
* there are times when the nuclear power plants have not enough capacity to power France. In winter the demand is possibly very high, like last winter, when it was cold and France was heating a lot with electricity (which we do not that much in Germany). In summer the nuclear power plants have to reduce their capacity, because the rivers are dry and there is not enough cooling water for them.
That's theory; compare it to practice:
Germany already imports electricity from France[1] -- during peak hours. The capacity your source cites is the optimistic variant. The industry simply can't run on the somewhat fickle solar and wind energy, so energy has to be imported. Of course there are ways around that -- energy storage of various kind, or vastly excess capacity, but those raise costs substantially. And that's the core of the problem: the green power companies shift the costs elsewhere, out of public sight. The sleight of hand works, because the numbers -- the optimistic capacity -- are right.
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[1] sorry, no link here. They explained it during lecture in Greifswald's powerplant.