> thanks to China<p>We just have to be careful there. My fellow Europeans here will remember what resulted out of depending on an adversary for energy, in our case Russian NG. We don't want another energy crisis as the result of geopolitical tensions.<p>We shouldn't import foreign DRM, our critical infrastructure should not utilize foreign-hosted or proprietary IoT, and we should invest in local manufacturing utilizing automation.
> We shouldn't import foreign DRM, our critical infrastructure should not utilize foreign-hosted or proprietary IoT, and we should invest in local manufacturing utilizing automation.<p>How have you still not learned? By god Europe's in an awful place if you still don't get it.<p>You first import them en masse. You reverse engineer, learn how to do everything. Then you slowly invest in local manufacturing. China has shown you the way.
Not quite the same, a solar panel installed doesn’t disappear if China changes their stance.
> <i>solar panel installed doesn’t disappear if China changes their stance</i><p>Most countries have days to, at most, months of imports of oil in reserve. In contrast, a panel embargo wouldn’t have disastrous effects for years. But reliance it is the same. If you’re dependent on Chinese panels, China can cap your energy growth at whim. The degradation will be slow thereafter, but present nevertheless.<p>Using foreign panels for anything other than bootstrapping domestic or allied production would be the EU repeating its follies first with Russia and then with American LNG.
Stopping new panels in some hypothetical scenario is very different than stopping fossil fuel delivery when ch can stop ongoing energy production - it not even in the same timescale of problem
What are the alternatives for Europe? Continue to import oil and gas? Have some of your most important economic inputs price and supply controlled by the dumbest egomaniacs alive?<p>Nuclear? Good luck building it on time and on budget. Also where exactly are you getting that Uranium from? I’m not necessarily against nuclear I just don’t think there’s much you can do in five or ten years to move the needle with Nuclear.<p>Wind? Actually a good option as it has a strong domestic supply chain.<p>Solar? Buy China’s cheap panels as long as they are selling. If they stop selling figure out how to do it yourself. It’s not some big mystery how panels get made, China just had the foresight to invest in the scale required to drive prices down.<p>Coal? I mean at least it’s local. But solar + batteries are either beating it now or will be in the next few years if the same trends that have held for the last 30 years continue for the next 2-5. So you’d be investing in a more expensive, dirtier technology for what end?<p>There is no world where you get to not make a decision and the risk just disappears. I think renewables have the clear advantage here and have very manageable risks.
It can stop working properly if the chinese panel is encryption locked to a chinese cloud which is the case with many residential installations.
Not the panel itself, but the firmware of the solar panel charge controller and inverter that's connected to the Internet because there's an app to monitor the system. I wouldn't bet that there aren't remote kill switches deep inside that firmware.
sodium, unlike oil, is availible everywhere, along with silicone/sand
which ,thanks to China for showing the way!,can be bootstrapped into a fully fosil fuelless grid.
lets be clear, this is not like setting up a city on mars, this is in the determined hobbiest in there garage level tech
so buy from China TODAY, heck, they will even sell you a turn key factory to build your own stuff!, also, TODAY!
it would be pretty straightforward to match up panels from any source to controllers free m local national sources
This is just foolishness in the modern world. A realistic trade policy would accept China getting AMSL nano-scale chip production machines in exchange for American manufacturers getting Chinese monocrystalline-ingot production machines.<p>Given the hysteria involved in Great Power warmongering circles, much of it designed to increase military-industrial outlays, this is highly unlikely at present, especially in the USA where fossil fuel demand destruction is something the investors in the fracking boom and the oilfield and refinery operators don’t want to see, just look at Exxon and Chevron profits over the past month. I doubt the affiliated investor-owned utilities would be thrilled about an explosion in US rooftop solar installations either, as that cuts directly into their revenue stream.<p>Now, if you want to build monocrystalline Si PV at scale from scratch to catch up to China, that’s going to take a lot of investment over a decade, and given the historical and present reluctance of the US government to fund such R & D at scale (tiny DOE budgets), it’s all going to be private, and private rentier-finance capital is not going to fund a major competitor to fossil fuels in the USA - margins are tighter, you replace a commodity stream with a one-time purchase of equipment with a minimum 20-yr lifespan, and unless you tightly control the equipment and the electrical generation, there go your rents, I mean profits.
All Europe has to do is let young people become billionaires with limited liability and an unencumbered team selection.<p>I know it sounds like satire, but there is a good reason tech exploded in the US 30 years ago while Europe is still making cars like it's the 1960's.