[jagraff]

Agreed - the good news is, in many circumstances renewable energy is cheaper for new energy capacity. As long as regulations move in the right direction, we are likely to see the global energy mix move towards renewable sources over time

[don_esteban]

Not only is the renewable energy cheaper, it also raises energy independence, which turns out to be quite relevant in today's world.

Furthermore, it also reduces the drain on the (often very fragile, for thirld world countries) foreign reserves, especially relevant when the oil prices fluctuate wildly.

If your solar panels are old and you don't have money to replace them, you get slightly less electricity. If you are out of gasoline/diesel and you have no money to buy it, you have a big, big, problem.

[cman1444]

This is exactly why I don't think it's a huge risk to be reliant on China for solar panels. If relations between your country and China go bad, it can't be that much of an emergency when they stop exporting them to you. All the panels you already bought still work!

Unless there is some hidden cybersecurity risk of them shutting off panels remotely?

[Koffiepoeder]

I would be more concerned for remotely triggered inverter spikes tbh. These could sabotage the whole grid if I'm not mistaken.

[chii]

> Unless there is some hidden cybersecurity risk of them shutting off panels remotely?

The weakest link won't be the panels themselves, but the grid infrastructure, or telephony infrastructure. Unless somehow the chinese were able to embed a radiowave activated kill-switch or something. Highly doubt it!

[fragmede]

Yes, exactly. The panel's control system is connected to the Internet and there's an app that an attacker could take advantage of to interfere with critical infrastructure at an inopportune time.

[don_esteban]

If you are doing grid-scale installation, surely you would want your own control system (perhaps also on your own network, separated from the general internet), precisely in order to protect the grid.

[bluGill]

This is no different - either way you are buying a system that includes controls. While separating this from the internet sounds great, in practice internet control is too useful to run without. Maybe you put in a few firewall rules to protect things, but these often are lose enough that a hacker and bypass them (by looking like a legitimate access - since the people who need to access this will want to work from their cell phone)

[tmp10423288442]

There’s always the issue that it might be hard to find competent people that can implement a control network isolated from the internet if it has an internet connection by default.

[IAmBroom]

When speaking about global energy mixes, or even nationwide energy mixes, regulations are just remixing the cost into separate buckets. Subsidizing oil for your citizens costs your country.

Trump did manage to make it more expensive for most of the world, but reversing that chaos is much, much harder.

[Muromec]

it doesn't have to be cheaper to be a problem, as long as somebody still makes money on it and corruption still exists.

And corruption is one of those annoying problems that dont go away easy

[jagraff]

I think right now, the vast majority of oil use is not because of corrupt officials using oil energy despite the fact that cheaper energy sources are available. Maybe that problem will eventually be a sticking point in removing all carbon-emitting energy sources, but right now the barrier is mostly production capacity and the scale of capital investment required to roll out renewables at scale. But if (as seems to be the case now) rolling out renewables is more profitable than rolling out additional fossil fuel use, the capital should become increasingly available. That's why I'm optimistic, even though of course there are a lot of challenges ahead in terms of creating a truly sustainable future.