you didn't point out any errors; maybe you noticed one and forgot to mention it. please let me know if so
if you're interested in taking the capacity factor into account, which accounts for things like night, clouds, and oblique illumination, a number of my other notes in https://dercuano.github.io/topics/solar.html (linked from the bottom of my above-linked note) do that; for example in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html i calculated that energy autarky for japan, if purely solar, would require 5% of its land area and about 1.7 trillion euros of solar modules, taking into account all of those factors as well as panel efficiency. since then, the price has dropped by more than a factor of 2, but the land area required remains about the same, or slightly increased
(floating that 5% of their land area on solar barges off the coast, instead of occupying precious land area, is also clearly feasible; it just isn't economically competitive, much like nuclear power)
of course, the real-life solution also involves wind and grid-scale storage
perhaps it goes without saying that very few places are as densely populated or as heavily industrialized as japan, so much smaller fractions of their land area would suffice
if you're interested in taking the capacity factor into account, which accounts for things like night, clouds, and oblique illumination, a number of my other notes in https://dercuano.github.io/topics/solar.html (linked from the bottom of my above-linked note) do that; for example in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html i calculated that energy autarky for japan, if purely solar, would require 5% of its land area and about 1.7 trillion euros of solar modules, taking into account all of those factors as well as panel efficiency. since then, the price has dropped by more than a factor of 2, but the land area required remains about the same, or slightly increased
(floating that 5% of their land area on solar barges off the coast, instead of occupying precious land area, is also clearly feasible; it just isn't economically competitive, much like nuclear power)
of course, the real-life solution also involves wind and grid-scale storage
perhaps it goes without saying that very few places are as densely populated or as heavily industrialized as japan, so much smaller fractions of their land area would suffice