Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwawaysleep | Hacker News Reader

> Why should it be harder than anywhere else to install same Chinese solar panels?

Democracy. Permitting. Federalism. Regulatory decentralization. Lots of things that make construction relatively difficult in the USA.

View on HN

All of these are in place in the EU too and we don't have a problem at all. We produced 10.2% of all electricity from solar in the same period. Having a lot less land and a lot less sun.

Half of the US voting population is still cheering cries of, "Drill baby drill". There are significant entrenched interests who are fighting renewable development wherever possible. It is only because the economics of solar panels have gotten too good to ignore that things are proceeding.

Solar panels are great at a consumer level due to utility metering agreements. At a grid level they are another story. Decentralized, fault tolerant, power grid with fall back generation just in case, is a tough challenge. This is why Europe pays the highest electricity prices in the world.

You also pay to send your kids to university, have the worlds best particle accelerator, and pay to take care of sick people.

Huh? Higher education is free for citizens in most EU countries and super cheap in the rest of them ($500-$5000 a year).

Pay to take care of sick people? Healthcare is socialised almost everywhere and is either free to use, or very cheap (and even commercial is cheap because it competes against free or very cheap state-provided one, even if it's patchy in quality and has long waiting times).

Thinking of "what's really wrong in EU" i can come up with only one thing really: our airlines are a pathetic piece of shit especially pertaining to the "premium" service, and no one really understands why.

I think they mean "pay to send your kids to university" and "pay to take care of sick people" as in the state absorbs the cost.

But the wording is ambiguous.

That is what I meant. The plural or collective you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com