Thanks for that link, this says what I've had to explain so many times.

https://www.auxsol.com/blog/how-long-do-solar-inverters-last...

" String Inverters: The most common residential choice, lasting 10–15 years on average and boasting impressive cost-performance.

Microinverters: Mounted directly on individual solar panels, these often reach 25 years—nearly matching the lifespan of solar panels themselves. Industry data highlights lower failure rates for microinverters, though they come with a higher upfront cost.

Central Inverters: Typically used for larger residential or commercial and industrial systems, central inverters last 10–15 years. "

Without an solar invertor a solar panel is just a black panel.

https://digitalpower.huawei.com/en/blogs/how-long-will-a-lit...

"Generally, lithium-ion batteries used in ordinary consumer electronics have a cycle life of about 300 to 500 times. After reaching this number of cycles, the battery capacity will drop to about 80% of its initial capacity. For example, if the lithium-ion battery of a smartphone undergoes a full charge-discharge cycle every day, its performance will significantly decline after approximately 1 to 1.5 years.

In contrast, lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, due to advancements in technology and craftsmanship, can achieve 1,000 to 2,000 charge-discharge cycles, with a correspondingly longer service life of 5 to 8 years or even more. Lithium-ion batteries for data centers have an even longer cycle life of approximately 5,000 cycles and a service life of up to 10 years, meaning there’s no need to replace batteries during the UPS’s full lifecycle. However, these are only theoretical estimates, and the actual service life is affected by various factors."

Sweden is currently going through an election year and its very clear how different the energy discussion is compared to HN. At one side you got parties advocating nuclear, and on the green/far left side the advocacy is wind and thermal power plants fueled by fossil fuels.

We used to have a battery developer, but they went instant bankrupt when the almost exclusive funding through government subsidizes stopped. They even rejected an offered loan from the government as not being what they wanted.

There is zero party platforms advocating for wind and batteries for weeks/months long storage. No party advocating a overprovisioning of solar either, possible because output during worst winter month generally reaching single digit percent.

The only political platforms that exist currently are either wind and thermal power plants to burn fuel during non-optimal weather conditions, or to expand the nuclear fleet, and it seems fairly similar when you look at other nearby European countries. Batteries are used as a grid balancer when switching between different form of production, but not as a replacement for the natural gas which is the primary form of fuel being burned in the thermal power plants. Election prediction is that voters are going to demand that construction of something is getting started as the Iran war is likely to trigger new spikes in fossil fuel prices, and thus this will be one of the major issues for the election. Other European countries will likely see similar election debates.

The consumption numbers for the worst month is a bit over 16 000 GW/h of electricity, with a steady growth each year (despite the transport sector being quite slow to electrify), and for a seasonal battery storage you would likely need capacity a few times of that. I would welcome it if a political party would adopt such strategy however, if nothing else because then we would have an alternative to the current two strategies being debated. They could calculations on what it would cost, either by buying it from china or building the production domestically.

Let's evaluate some basic constants.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is a shift in the vulnerability vector. The issue isn't even that China controls the production of solar panels and batteries. Production can be launched domestically. China controls 70-90% of refining - the processing chains of critical minerals (rare earth metals, polysilicon, lithium).

Renewables work perfectly for low-density consumers (residential sector, regular commerce). For heavy infrastructure, this won't work.

For example, let's look at AI data centers. AI data centers consume gigawatts of dense energy. Renewables are low-density energy. The problem comes down to spatial energy density (Watts per square meter — W/m²). A server rack for AI training consumes up to 40-100 kW. Solar and wind energy are diffuse (scattered) sources. Their density is about 5-20 W/m². A hyperscaler data center is a concentration of colossal energy in a minimal area (hundreds of megawatts per building).

Training LLM models cannot be interrupted when the sun goes down or the wind dies down. AI requires 24/7 baseload (base generation). The capacity factor of solar is 15-25%, wind — 30-45%. Batteries can smooth out peaks for 2-4 hours, but cannot provide seasonal or multi-day baseload.

Where do we plan to build solar and wind parks? - In deserts and offshore zones. This will require a radical expansion of the grids. We will run into a copper deficit (and things aren't smooth with aluminum either).

Long-term structural capital will go into nuclear energy, gas generation (as a backup), and copper/uranium mining.

Heck China has been in this exact predicament for decades. They imported all the foreign technology they can, while simultaneously learning all they can to make things themselves and stop being dependent. After 50 years it's finally paying off. They could not be where they are now had they blocked all foreign imports from the start.

> solar panel installed doesn’t disappear if China changes their stance

Most countries have days to, at most, months of imports of oil in reserve. In contrast, a panel embargo wouldn’t have disastrous effects for years. But reliance it is the same. If you’re dependent on Chinese panels, China can cap your energy growth at whim. The degradation will be slow thereafter, but present nevertheless.

Using foreign panels for anything other than bootstrapping domestic or allied production would be the EU repeating its follies first with Russia and then with American LNG.

But there is some valid concern around internet-connected PV / battery power electronics getting bricked remotely.

It can stop working properly if the chinese panel is encryption locked to a chinese cloud which is the case with many residential installations.

Not the panel itself, but the firmware of the solar panel charge controller and inverter that's connected to the Internet because there's an app to monitor the system. I wouldn't bet that there aren't remote kill switches deep inside that firmware.

Germany was a pioneer in manufacturing solar panels ans has let China take over. Their Maglev train is also only running in China.

German industry does not want to pay anyone, imports cheap foreigners for tasks that have to be done in Germany and outsources the rest.

China copied the US. Now the US should copy China. At least with some things, like industrial policy.

Yes, it’s amazing the things you can see fitting into this same mold once you realize that many of our issues in this country are due to old men (and old companies) holding onto power when they should really let the next generation take control.

And how incredibly beneficial that has been to society at large, oh boy. Definitely something we need more of!

Tech exploding in the US brought us lots of activity, but arguably not that much progress.

I'd much rather live in europe, having experienced both cultures. I don't have any problem with people earning wealth from selling goods and services, but I could do without people who want to be billionaires simply to be a billionaire.