In the US the cost of the red tape / bureaucracy is about 3-4x the cost of the total installation in places like Australia on a per kw basis. Including the Ozzy

In the US the cost of the red tape / bureaucracy is about 3-4x the cost of the total installation in places like Australia on a per kw basis. Including the Ozzy red tape. The US just has very inefficient bureaucracy. In Australia you can go from the notion of "hmm I might want to put some solar on my roof" to having it, approved, installed and running in a couple of weeks. Safely and legally. In the US you lose months at best. Half a year is nothing. And everybody involved wants to make a profit so that's where all the cost goes. The crazy thing is that even with all that cost and bloat it's still worth doing. Imagine how good it would be if the US could figure out how to do stuff efficiently. Both cost and complexity have to come down there. A lot of the friction in the system is a combination of the fossil fuel industry lobbying very successfully against anything to do with renewables, local energy monopolists resisting change and the notion of competition from their own customers (or any form of competition), and inept politicians coming up with ways to keep those happy. And as an EU person, it's not that much better here. Better than the US. But we can do better.