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China Added More Solar Panels in 2023 Than US Did in Its Entire History
- impish9208 3y agohttps://archive.is/sfsw5 https://archive.is/sfsw5
- anovikov 3y agoIf Commies do that, it should prove this isn't some treehugger's fantasy.
- genman 3y ago[flagged]
- FromTheSteppe 3y agoWhat I read is "We need to eliminate one party to start investing more in clean energy."
- mandmandam 3y ago> building a huge amount of solar panel capacity might prove to be highly profitable energy production but it may also not It's about as sure as the sun coming up tomorrow. Besides, profit is only one consideration. Energy security is kind of a big deal.
- genman 3y agoThe panels might not prove to be reliable in the long run - breakdowns, output degradation, weardown because of weather etc can happen.
- hnu234 3y ago[flagged]
- bequanna 3y ago> The soviets nor the chinese can hold a candle to the US or europe when it comes to ecosystem destruction. Chernobyl had entered the chat. Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issues_in_Russ... https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-the-soviet-union-created-central-asias-worst-environmental-disaster/ https://thediplomat.com/2014/10/how-the-soviet-union-created...
- Ographer 3y agoBesides the countless examples of the US directly destroying the environment and wiping out entire species, the modern issue is that the US and much of Europe overconsume and import all of these goods and energy which means that they export the pollution and environmental damage to other countries, hiding the problem out of sight. China is only such a large polluter because it is manufacturing everything for the entire world. All of our nice living conditions in the US and Europe come at the expense of developing nations. Poor factory conditions, rampant air, water, and ground pollution, deforestation, poverty. These are pushed onto every nation below it in the supply chain.
- genman 3y agoI disagree with this sentiment. China is large polluter because it chooses to ignore environmental damaged because it does allow it to have large profit and compete in the international market where competing producers from other countries are bound by more strict environmental laws and are unable to compete on the fair ground.
- paradox460 3y agoAral sea disaster ought to take the cake for sheer destruction.
- Ographer 3y agoIs fighting climate change a waste of money? Even if it turns out to be more expensive than burning coal, isn't this still a better outcome when they need to increase electricity supply anyways? This is a good example of putting green energy above corporate profits which capitalist nations struggle with.
- rdtsc 3y agoWell commies also ordered killing sparrows and so maybe we should do opposite? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
- anovikov 3y agoI remember my kid couldn't sleep for two nights when i told her about that to examplify evils of totalitarianism!
- hnu234 3y agoThen I guess the extermination of the wolverines, passenger pigeons, american eagle, american buffalo, etc exemplifies what? The evils of capitalism? The evils of democracy? Not to mention the extermination of the native americans... What's with all the deranged and obvious propaganda here? Your 'kid' really couldn't sleep for 2 night or did you make it up to push silly propaganda?
- bequanna 3y agoI think you’re missing the point. We shouldn’t look at every action taken by someone we disagree with and think: “let’s do the opposite” Super relevant in the US today where both sides are unwilling to appreciate anything positive done by the other.
- Ographer 3y agoWhy cherry pick a single bad thing from over 60 years ago? Is that supposed to discredit all actions by the country? One could find just as many examples, if not more, of the US destroying the ecosystem in that same time period. The US is held back by corporations that demand ever increasing profits and by political parties that roadblock each other such that it cannot focus any substantial effort on meaningful initiatives for change.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoThe 100,000,000 starved is 100,000,000 bad things.
- westurner 3y agoHave PV tariffs increased or decreased US solar investment and sales? Have the Pennsylvanians' solar tariffs helped or hurted American industry and trade relations? Are they still able to compete at internationally competitive price points given the presumed tariff advantage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs#Solar_panels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs#Solar_panels Noting that for example US Steel is soon to no longer be domestically owned; and there the Pennsylvanians' trade protectionism didn't solve either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Steel Would more tariffs have helped keep US Steel in the US?
- Bhilai 3y agoWas getting a new roof and seriously considered getting solar panels also. Spoke to several experts, read forums on ideal panels and inverters and so on. Got like 8 quotes, resized the system several times for optimal production vs consumption ratio. In every single calculation, the monthly loan repayment on solar panels was more than what I pay for electricity today. Even if I considered increasing energy costs, it was still going to cost more on a per month basis. The payoff period ranged from 12-20 years. I should note I live in an almost "anti-solar" state, my energy provider does not have net-metering and only pays back half for what we produce. I was told that a big portion of the cost was installation and DIY would be cheaper but heck I am not the guy who would climb on the roof. I could have surely done it for the good of mother earth but financially it made no sense.
- huytersd 3y agoIt depends. If you have an EV that number starts becoming favorable very quickly.
- castis 3y ago> I could have surely done it for the good of mother earth but financially it made no sense. This seems like a recurring theme in todays world.
- jonwachob91 3y agoHey! Obviously I don't know your specific needs, or what quotes you got. But I'm willing to venture a guess that you got quotes from the standard solar companies - the ones that serve as all in one stops, project managements, permitting, purchasing, installing, etc. Those services are nuts! I got a bunch of quotes from many of those types of companies for my own home a few years ago, and they all quoted me around $45k (+/- a few grand depending on the company). Realizing that was way to expensive, I put in a little elbow work and was able to come up with a quote for $18k to do the project management myself - I found a solar reseller (solarwholesale, no idea if they are still around) that quoted me $12k for the panels and installation hardware, plus they'd provide the architecture documents I'd need for permitting, the company that most recently installed my new roof quoted be <$2k to install the solar panels (just the hardware, no electrical connections), I spoke to a local electrician who quoted me ~$2k to do the electrical connections on the panels, the fuse box connections, and connection to the grid, and the remaining $2k was for miscellaneous things like permitting and other things I don't recall exactly. It was work, but it was work well worth saving $27k compared to what the one-stop-shop solar installers want.
- turtlebits 3y agoThe US needs more DIY/small scale solar. I would even advocate "off-grid" DIY solar (no grid tie) and just use batteries as you may be able to avoid permitting and expensive install labor. You can easily get up and running for under $1k. Right now, it seems any trade work is prohibitively expensive. I recently redid my own garage roof added mini split systems because costs for roofers and HVAC is out of control and finding quality work is hard. I called an electrician out to run the circuits and it was $$$. Next time I'll run the wires myself and just have them do the connections.
- throwaway5959 3y agoWe had it happening in CA. The utilities put a stop to it though by making it not economical unless you’re not tied into the grid at all, and most people don’t have the space for that kind of solar and battery installation.
- callalex 3y agoCan you expand on your first sentence? Why does the US need diy solar? We don’t operate individual natural gas turbines in every house either for a lot of reasons, instead we invented the grid.
- rfwhyte 3y agoI imagine largely because it can happen much quicker than grid scale projects, as it's a lot easier for thousands of individuals to make modest personal investments, than it is for governments to make huge capital investments. Plus the reduced dependency on the grid would reduce peak loads and improve grid stability for all users.
- callalex 3y agoIt’s not clear at all to me that hiring individual contractors piecemeal for 2-8kW of capacity hundreds of thousands to millions of times vs a few MW scale plants dozens of times is quicker to implement. Also power generation is typically not done by the government but by private for profits. As far as peak load solar doesn’t solve the problem for grid operators because peak electricity demand happens well after the sun stops producing which means that solar users are simultaneously paying less to maintain the grid while also putting the most variable load on the grid. This problem has been very thoroughly explored and debated, it is called the “duck curve” problem. The only solution to the duck curve problem is storage. That puts us back at square 1 where individuals operating small batteries and inverters cannot be as efficient as large scale battery banks that prolong the life of the same batteries through better thermal management and larger and fewer inverters etc.
- rfwhyte 3y agoChina also built more coal fired power plants in the past year than the rest of the world combined has built in the last decade, and has more operational coal power plants than the rest of the world combined. China's so called "Commitments" to green energy are just (coal) smoke and mirrors.
- deadghost 3y agoReducing dependency on petroleum is a good idea yes. If not for the environment, then for national and economic interests. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_crisis List also leaves off things like: WW2 Japan being totally immobilized from lack of oil, Allies not pushing a faster end to Nazi Germany due to fuel limitations, US eastern fleet being threatened by the '73 embargo. The prosperity and security of the nations of the world should not be beholden to a handful of often unstable oil states.