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by AtlasBarfed 1413 days ago
One of the reasons I LOVE home solar and BEVs. It makes us so much more resilient to outages and disasters and disruptions on the critical aspects of energy, heating/cooling, and transportation.

How much would germany kill to have a robust home solar installation right now? Even if you reduce dependence buy 20-30% from previous levels, that opens options for other sourcing.

And, uh, how about people bundle up and live in chillier houses? Christ they don't even really go under freezing that much. Sleep under thicker blankets.

There's other options: crash programs for insulation. wood stoves.

But I agree, there absolutely should be a minimum local sourcing for most products. We certainly do it for agriculture effectively with trade barriers and other regulation.

These ultra-extended supply lines are outgrowths of monopoly and cartel economics which dominate our markets rather than a robust amount of competition (which would enable options as well as alternate sourcing). We need a lot more competition and antitrust enforcement. The amount of political power handed to both state powers and the monopoly companies that are their partners is outlandish and dangerous.
2 comments
tharkun__ 1412 days ago
Despite what the sibling says which is also true, especially in winter, Germany has a lot of solar in comparison to ten years ago and depending on what you do otherwise for heating building a house requires solar (it seems a lot of people use it for hot water instead of electricity) installations. Being Germany there's lots of rules which I don't know in detail since I don't live there. But here's a quick Google result for some of it: https://www.nibe.eu/de-de/support/artikel/solaranlage#pflich...

Also a lot of landlords (corporate ones) have already announced that they will only supply heating up to 20C this winter. There's a lot of discussion about that going around i.e. people complaining about that.

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cudgy 1412 days ago
> How much would germany kill to have a robust home solar installation right now?

Maybe not much killing, since solar requires consistent sunlight, which is not as prevalent in Germany.

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