I've long thought that any country should buy solar panels from any other country that's crazy enough to sell them to you at a subsidized price. It's not like buying oil; once you have the panels, that energy independence belongs to you.

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modo_mario 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the end you have to replace those panels and nobody in your country now produces them or has the incentive to start producing them unless they not only drop the subsidies but sell well over market value.

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collinmcnulty 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In 25 years, those panels will still be producing 80% of their starting value. Imagine what you can do with 25 years of energy independence.

	▲	hinkley 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well it’s about 40 years since the US started getting stupid about foreign trade and things are not going so well here now. Send help.

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thelastgallon an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You have 25 - 50 years. Put your STE people to work. CSIRO is probably a decent org, give them a Manhattan project?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSIRO

	▲	nutjob2 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		CSIRO and the University of New South Wales are the source of today's cutting edge solar panel tech. It's just manufacturing went to China and that is the challenge. It'll be met when China becomes totally untenable as a trading partner.

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abdullahkhalids an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The alternative for most countries except a handful is that they continue to import oil from the two dozen-ish odd countries who export it.

The policy relevant question then boils down to, in two decades how many countries will be producing enough solar panels to export it? How many will be friendly to my country?

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henry2023 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

what if you develop manufacturing capabilities during the 30 years lifespan of the panels?

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pocksuppet 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How many solar panels did you buy?

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collinmcnulty 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

11, and I wish I'd bought 15

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philjohn 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I bought 32 and wished I got another 6 for the south west aspect of the house ... but still, producing 11mWh a year in the UK on an east/west aspect, electricity bill for the year (even with all cars in the household being EV's) is negative. Battery makes the difference - load shifting is doing the heavy lifting in the winter.

	▲	quickthrowman 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I hope you’re generating more than 11 milliwatt-hours per year, guessing you meant MWh :) 322501400=11,200,000 watt hours, which makes more sense ;)

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iAMkenough 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Probably depends on what country they live in and whether their government is spending billions of their taxpayer dollars to simply not build renewable energy projects and invest additional billions on top of that in new oil, gas and coal instead.