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by daedrdev 1 day ago
There is currently 2x us electricity production in solar and batteries stuck in permit hell due to the US requiring they pay for grid upgrades before connection in a first in first out line that has grown in length and costs.

We could have cheap and available renewables, but we instead destroy them in bureaucratic hell that nobody cares about.

2 comments

> due to the US requiring they pay for grid upgrades before connection

Is that not perfectly reasonable? Someone doing half the job and dumping the rest on everyone else seems like exactly the sort of thing a regulator exists to prevent.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the issue is that solar would be located somewhere remote, the backhaul to get that electricity where it needs to be requires significant upgrades, and that takes time. Which is unfortunate and indicates historic mismanagement of said infrastructure but nonetheless the present day policy of "fix the problem first" seems perfectly reasonable.

The problem is, we didn't require any of the fossil fuel companies to do this.
Are they connecting gas generators to the grid?