At a federal level the US is moving backwards. But at a local and personal level, for the first time in generation, a huge number are waking up to the direct consequences of their dependency on the global oil markets and it's impacts their daily lives.
People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.
The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.
We can go faster, as China demonstrates (~400GW of renewables deployed annually), and as someone who believes in climate change, I personally would like to go as fast as physics will allow.
Solar power is 10000x as hard to permit where I live. I was able to connect to the grid without anyone looking at it. Laterally just hooked up a 200amp secondary connection straight to the grid without anyone from the government batting an eye and on the power in the house went. If I wanted even a 200W solar panel it requires a code inspection, a marked roof plan (my house doesn't even have building plans, so how to even do this?), license, special solar bond, and a special warranty and then clearance from the power company.
Fuck that.
Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.
Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.
I've thought about it. My thought was a giant oil derrick with a bunch of utilities on it. I also thought about just making the entire house part of an oil derrick.
I cannot speak to where you live without knowing where you live, but https://www.gosolarapp.org/ was incubated by a DOE lab to streamline residential permitting with automation, and many states override local planning for permitting and siting utility scale solar.
As always, this is an OSI layer 8 people problem; if you can and want to, get involved.
Trump might ironically end up being the guy that pushes society over the green energy tipping point.
EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."
Well Trump doesn't exactly have the sufficient work ethic, mental acuity or sense of purpose to as much damage (and hopefully not more than a handful of years left on this earth in general to end up having to shot himself in a bunker).
If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy.
Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.
Well besides being 20 years too late. Germany's energy policy was basically do nothing to build renewables, close all nuclear plants and blindly trust Russia for decades...
Besides being a great friend of Putin one of Germany's previous chancellors was literally an openly paid Russian agent who didn't even try hiding it until 2022 (and who knows what "arrangements" he had before he left office...)
Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.
Nuclear is not that steady. Nuclear plants require a lot of water to cool things. And when a particular hot summer happens, rivers dry out and nuclear reactors have to scale down the power production or even be shutdown. And then they require quite significant maintenance periodically.
Granted, in Europe a hot dry summer is when solar is at its peak. So it is much lesser problem than a cold winter with a lot of cloudy days with no wind when nuclear energy is ideal.
Still from a perspective of 20 years ago with unknown prospects about renewables natural gas power stations were considered much more reliable and flexible power source compared with nuclear and way more cleaner than coal. Of cause, as long as one gets gas.
It is simply false that it was Merkel who decided to shut down nuclear power plants. The decision had been made over a decade earlier. She just accelerated the plan in the end after a previous unsuccessful attempt at rolling back part of it. It also wasn't even really her decision, it was the will of the people that sharply turned against nuclear after Fukushima, she just implemented it.
It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples minds. The US is not only the EU's largest trade partner but they're considerably freer and richer than the EU, showing a path forward for the continent. The US is not a "threat for their way of living" lol, especially when Europe is currently fighting a war in Ukraine and struggling to handle mass middle-east immigration
Guess where the midlle-east mass migration comes from? Surely not from the US bombing the everliving shit out of folks living there and leaving us to deal with the fallout?
The only thing the US shows Europe is a cautionary tale of social decay and the consequences of letting Capital run their society.
When? The French are to blame for Algeria an most of Africa, but Lebanon is the ex-french colony that suffered the less from French rule, and used to be a perfect example of multiculturalism before a nearby rogue state started putting their greasy hands everywhere.
Unless you talk about Lybia, but that's not ME (and yes, 80% of the French)
A country can be your largest trading partner and single biggest threat to sovereignty at the same time. Just ask Canadians.
I also take issue with the claim that Americans are freer or richer. The Iranian adventure, even were it to end immediately, has taken socialized medicine off the table for another generation of Americans, leaving typical Americans a lot poorer than salaries suggest. A ground invasion could easily bankrupt the U.S.. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to operate as a pre-Magna Carta king and the courts charged with stopping him are rapidly crumbling under pressure. This is a serious backslide into authoritarianism.
The irony about tRump is he sometimes says the quiet part out loud. He is a pathological liar yet at the same time he speaks truth. He revealed the USA's ruling Elite's desire to make Canada a vassal state. Arguably, the Canadian Elite did it when Brian Mulroney, (he was originally against it himself but the Business lobby told him otherwise: he dutifully complied with his donors), pushed and signed the free trade agreement: "I'm rolling the dice!". He was persuaded to put the decision to an election first. He won the majority of seats, but not the popular vote. He signed it anyway. Now, Canada finds itself in the position that his opposition warned about: that putting your eggs in one basket was taking a big risk that US wasn't going to be ruled by a Fascist Dictator.
But thanks to the Fascist Dictator Canadians have once again woken up to the folly of tying yourself so closely to a giant who goes rogue. The Republican Party should be deeply ashamed of themselves for kowtowing to tRump. Mind you, there is plenty of things the Republican Party should be ashamed about - they helped create the situation that would make the election of tRump possible - with their poverty inducing policies. The Republican Party is as loathsome as the Nazi Party.
And then there is the feckless Democrats. Absolutely useless.
Most recently Russia and Iran's Hezbollah in Syria, and Yemen's civil war involving Iran's Houthis and Egypt/Saudi Arabia. The US was involved in the Syrian civil war but not responsible for most of the civilian destruction. People outside the region have this childish understanding of the ME where Iraq is the only thing that happened (conveniently also forgetting the much more brutal Iran-Iraq war).
And to further your point mass immigration into Europe isn't just recent; it's been happening for decades. For a while the Islamic state was encouraging attacks in Europe, and hundreds of people were killed by jihadists running cars through Christmas parades and similar events which peaked ~2016 and 2017. I think the largest was an attack in Nice, France on Bastille day killing 86 and injuring hundreds (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Nice_truck_attack) and another famous one I can think of was the christmas market attack in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 56 (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Berlin_truck_attack). These were the result of economic immigration, unrelated to anything specific the US had done.
The power vacuum after the US messed up Iraq and Syria. Every single wave of mass migration towards Europe is the direct result of the US choosing to bomb the Middle East. That's also part of why this time around, everybody's quite this annoyed at America.
At least the US still has energy infrastructure, while the EU is forced to financially support Dictators in Tehran and Moscow to keep their economy from collapsing.
EVs are still a bit underwhelming wrt range - ideally either 450miles/700km or 5 minute 20->80% recharge at an acceptable price (35k EUR) should be the norm. For cities it doesn't matter but for longer vacation trips it's a must, nobody wants to waste 3 hours on a 1100km trip recharging. Chinese EVs might be able to deliver it at this price point (BYD) but EU adds additional (up to) 45% in extra fees to penalize Chinese EV makers and to prevent collapse of EU car makers.
1 in 4 vehicles sold globally last year were EVs, and they are >50% of the monthly sales in China, the largest market in the world. EVs are mostly solved, even though they will continue to rapidly improve, both range and charging infrastructure. Norway is at ~100% monthly EV sales, other countries will get there eventually.
Importantly, we should expect to go faster as EV sales reach a point where combustion sales have declined to a level where they can no longer support combustion vehicle manufacturers as a going concern. Peak global combustion auto sales occurred in 2017.
The trend is clear but right now they aren't able to replace ICE cars due to what I mentioned above. Either they lack range/recharging convenience or they don't but are too expensive. They need a few more years of scaling or EU to stop penalizing Chinese EVs.
ICE =! NEVs (which includes BEVs and PHEVs, with BEVs still the majority). If folks want to buy PHEVs until BEVs steamroll them, whatevs, the BEV cost decline and uptake curves speak for themselves. Combustion isn't getting cheaper anytime soon.
Yeah Europeans are going to stick to their little diesel city cars.
Many Europeans cannot afford iPhones as they are an overpriced costly luxury there, yet I'm supposed to believe they're all going out tomorrow to buy solar panels. Right.
Heat pumps? They're famous for hating air conditioning and mostly heat their homes with hydronic, but whatever.
That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.
I'm shocked that safety-conscious Europe—especially Germany, known for its strict rules—would allow this.
Or is this more AliExpress garbage with a German flag glued to it?
> That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.
This is factually inaccurate. Utah was the first to legalize plug in solar, and 17 other states have legislation pending to do so. It sounds like you are unaware of regulations around islanding in both Europe and the US. This is a solved problem.
> The biggest regulatory concern – energizing lines during an outage and putting line workers at risk – is not really an issue, since inverters are covered by UL 1741, and have “anti-islanding” capability.
UL 3700 specifically addresses plug in solar risks and mitigating them.
I have a set of solar panels and a "hydronic" heat pump, despite living all the way up at 56N in the maybe-Europe UK. We also have access to both cheap Chinese EVs and the increasingly acceptable EU ones, like the Renault 5.
The only reason people skip the iPhone here is because it is directly associated with being an asshole. Sent from my heatpump-heated home in the Julian Alps.
If only the US was doing this too.
At a federal level the US is moving backwards. But at a local and personal level, for the first time in generation, a huge number are waking up to the direct consequences of their dependency on the global oil markets and it's impacts their daily lives.
People in the US still don't like feeling like hostages, and this episode is a stark reminder of that.
The last geopolitical oil shocks of the 1970s resulted in huge efficiency increases in transportation and energy - this will likely do the same, but with current technologies.
From the stats I've seen, people in the US are doing it. A huge amount, and more each year.
The economics of it are just too good. Adding grid connectivity seems to be the bottleneck right now.
It will again eventually, will just take more time than it otherwise would've taken.
https://electrek.co/2026/03/25/eia-new-solar-wind-storage-ca...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy-manufactur...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...
https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-states
I'd argue it already is. Only 7% of electricity generating capacity being added in 2026 will be natural gas.
> Solar power makes up 51% of the planned 2026 capacity additions, followed by battery storage at 28% and wind at 14%.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
We can go faster, as China demonstrates (~400GW of renewables deployed annually), and as someone who believes in climate change, I personally would like to go as fast as physics will allow.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-transi...
https://www.cfr.org/articles/china-is-planning-decades-ahead...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/10/1119941/china-en...
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay
https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202601/30/cont...
Solar power is 10000x as hard to permit where I live. I was able to connect to the grid without anyone looking at it. Laterally just hooked up a 200amp secondary connection straight to the grid without anyone from the government batting an eye and on the power in the house went. If I wanted even a 200W solar panel it requires a code inspection, a marked roof plan (my house doesn't even have building plans, so how to even do this?), license, special solar bond, and a special warranty and then clearance from the power company.
Fuck that.
Many counties have made it so that solar only makes sense if you are wildcatting it out in some remote place where the planning and zoning fascists won't find you out. In such case you can install it for an order of magnitude cheaper and then it actually makes sense.
Meanwhile I can build a 200 foot tall oil derrick on my land with NO PERMIT WHATSOEVER because of course the oil companies had the political influence to exempt oil related infrastructure from requirements.
Solution: oil derrick covered in solar panels.
(joking, but wow that really does highlight how absolutely dysfunctional US regulation is, no wonder everyone over there hates their government)
I've thought about it. My thought was a giant oil derrick with a bunch of utilities on it. I also thought about just making the entire house part of an oil derrick.
I cannot speak to where you live without knowing where you live, but https://www.gosolarapp.org/ was incubated by a DOE lab to streamline residential permitting with automation, and many states override local planning for permitting and siting utility scale solar.
As always, this is an OSI layer 8 people problem; if you can and want to, get involved.
Trump might ironically end up being the guy that pushes society over the green energy tipping point.
EVs were all the rage a few years ago, but they were expensive and gas prices collapsed. However if we get another $5-$6/gal gut punch, a lot of people will probably say "You know what? I'm done with this shit."
UK petrol prices (at time of comment) of ~£1.50/l are equivalent to $7.50/USgal.
People around me are expecting to see diesel at £2/l soon.
It all depends on how long they remain that high. After reading [1] this i would not count on it.
[1](https://archive.ph/NLJWJ)
The Greenest President Ever!
The World works in mysterious ways.
If it were to be so I would exclaim "What a poor vessel have we found to do this work." Sigh..
Similar to how Hitler ushered in a whole generation of liberal demacracy and human rights protection across the world.
Well Trump doesn't exactly have the sufficient work ethic, mental acuity or sense of purpose to as much damage (and hopefully not more than a handful of years left on this earth in general to end up having to shot himself in a bunker).
USA and mainly Israel are the biggest threat for the way of living in Europe.
Especially for the economy and safety.
So these two are definitely amongst the biggest, but let's not forget about the Russians literally murdering our neighbors.
Well Russia doesn't have much going for it besides oil, nukes (and obviously Trump propping it up).
Lol every single comment in your posting history is one sentence that includes the world Israel.
Truth hurts some people. They start attacking the person instead of the message.
This account has only left comments blaming Israel. Also not a single reply to any of the top-level comments.
100% sure this is a bot, set up by some hater.
Their comment is on topic, your's is not, and also what you're doing is against site guidelines.
also not a single hacker-news/technology related comment
If your energy policy was "hope the Ayatollah doesn't have a bad hair day", you didn't have an energy policy.
Europe could have left their nuclear power plants turned on. Or drilled in the north sea. Or built LNG import terminals. These were all policy choices that had nothing to do with the US or Israel.
The energy policy is "let's build out renewables". It's happening rn and it's better than any of the options you mention.
Well besides being 20 years too late. Germany's energy policy was basically do nothing to build renewables, close all nuclear plants and blindly trust Russia for decades...
Besides being a great friend of Putin one of Germany's previous chancellors was literally an openly paid Russian agent who didn't even try hiding it until 2022 (and who knows what "arrangements" he had before he left office...)
That is just straight up not true: https://www.techeblog.com/europe-balcony-solar-system/
Germany's been a pioneer in incentivizing personal solar installations.
In what way exactly anything I said was not true?
It was too little and too late and Germany only got serious about it when there were no longer any other options.
> personal solar installations
It was entirely insignificant back then and growth pretty much entirely stopped between 2012 and 2018.
> better than any of the options you mention.
Yeah, no. Merkel's deal to shut off the nuclear plants to make a coalition was 100% a blunder. Not only in hindsight, with the dependence on russian gas, but in general it was a blunder. Nuclear gives you steady energy in ways that renewables can't. We should absolutely do more renewables, but to shut off working nuclear was not good.
Nuclear is not that steady. Nuclear plants require a lot of water to cool things. And when a particular hot summer happens, rivers dry out and nuclear reactors have to scale down the power production or even be shutdown. And then they require quite significant maintenance periodically.
Granted, in Europe a hot dry summer is when solar is at its peak. So it is much lesser problem than a cold winter with a lot of cloudy days with no wind when nuclear energy is ideal.
Still from a perspective of 20 years ago with unknown prospects about renewables natural gas power stations were considered much more reliable and flexible power source compared with nuclear and way more cleaner than coal. Of cause, as long as one gets gas.
It is simply false that it was Merkel who decided to shut down nuclear power plants. The decision had been made over a decade earlier. She just accelerated the plan in the end after a previous unsuccessful attempt at rolling back part of it. It also wasn't even really her decision, it was the will of the people that sharply turned against nuclear after Fukushima, she just implemented it.
I don't disagree, though I see nuclear as an (overly expensive) bridge technology until storage becomes more built-out.
It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples minds. The US is not only the EU's largest trade partner but they're considerably freer and richer than the EU, showing a path forward for the continent. The US is not a "threat for their way of living" lol, especially when Europe is currently fighting a war in Ukraine and struggling to handle mass middle-east immigration
Guess where the midlle-east mass migration comes from? Surely not from the US bombing the everliving shit out of folks living there and leaving us to deal with the fallout?
The only thing the US shows Europe is a cautionary tale of social decay and the consequences of letting Capital run their society.
I mean, y'all gotta own the mess in the middle east too. That's far from a US solo production.
The latest mess is all on the Americans. But yes, the French were also not without blame.
When? The French are to blame for Algeria an most of Africa, but Lebanon is the ex-french colony that suffered the less from French rule, and used to be a perfect example of multiculturalism before a nearby rogue state started putting their greasy hands everywhere.
Unless you talk about Lybia, but that's not ME (and yes, 80% of the French)
> they're considerably freer and richer than the EU
Freer to bend over for ICE thugs, or is there some other definition of freedom that you’ve meant?
> especially when Europe is currently fighting a war in Ukraine
Ukraine is fighting war in Ukraine with financial support of Europe. Big difference.
> and struggling to handle mass middle-east immigration
Caused by US bombing.
Not Assad gassing his own people with chemical weapons with support of Russia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_intervention_in_the_Sy...
A country can be your largest trading partner and single biggest threat to sovereignty at the same time. Just ask Canadians.
I also take issue with the claim that Americans are freer or richer. The Iranian adventure, even were it to end immediately, has taken socialized medicine off the table for another generation of Americans, leaving typical Americans a lot poorer than salaries suggest. A ground invasion could easily bankrupt the U.S.. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to operate as a pre-Magna Carta king and the courts charged with stopping him are rapidly crumbling under pressure. This is a serious backslide into authoritarianism.
The irony about tRump is he sometimes says the quiet part out loud. He is a pathological liar yet at the same time he speaks truth. He revealed the USA's ruling Elite's desire to make Canada a vassal state. Arguably, the Canadian Elite did it when Brian Mulroney, (he was originally against it himself but the Business lobby told him otherwise: he dutifully complied with his donors), pushed and signed the free trade agreement: "I'm rolling the dice!". He was persuaded to put the decision to an election first. He won the majority of seats, but not the popular vote. He signed it anyway. Now, Canada finds itself in the position that his opposition warned about: that putting your eggs in one basket was taking a big risk that US wasn't going to be ruled by a Fascist Dictator.
But thanks to the Fascist Dictator Canadians have once again woken up to the folly of tying yourself so closely to a giant who goes rogue. The Republican Party should be deeply ashamed of themselves for kowtowing to tRump. Mind you, there is plenty of things the Republican Party should be ashamed about - they helped create the situation that would make the election of tRump possible - with their poverty inducing policies. The Republican Party is as loathsome as the Nazi Party.
And then there is the feckless Democrats. Absolutely useless.
Who do you think caused that mass immigration?
Most recently Russia and Iran's Hezbollah in Syria, and Yemen's civil war involving Iran's Houthis and Egypt/Saudi Arabia. The US was involved in the Syrian civil war but not responsible for most of the civilian destruction. People outside the region have this childish understanding of the ME where Iraq is the only thing that happened (conveniently also forgetting the much more brutal Iran-Iraq war).
And to further your point mass immigration into Europe isn't just recent; it's been happening for decades. For a while the Islamic state was encouraging attacks in Europe, and hundreds of people were killed by jihadists running cars through Christmas parades and similar events which peaked ~2016 and 2017. I think the largest was an attack in Nice, France on Bastille day killing 86 and injuring hundreds (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Nice_truck_attack) and another famous one I can think of was the christmas market attack in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 56 (https://grokipedia.com/page/2016_Berlin_truck_attack). These were the result of economic immigration, unrelated to anything specific the US had done.
Where did the Islamic State come from?
The power vacuum after the US messed up Iraq and Syria. Every single wave of mass migration towards Europe is the direct result of the US choosing to bomb the Middle East. That's also part of why this time around, everybody's quite this annoyed at America.
Also please, use serious sources.
> It's incredible how social media addiction warps peoples minds
The most prominent victim of this appears to be the US president himself.
Have you missed the events of the past year under Trump? With literal claims of taking over EU territory?
I know that Trump is the equivalent of a hallucinating LLM, but you can’t just ignore his words whenever convenient.
> considerably freer and richer than the EU
Cope harder. The US doesn't offer a single example of being better than the EU.
It's always better to back up ones arguments with facts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
The USA really hasn't been doing well lately.
That's just a small part of it. EU has a better quality of life, better food, better housing, better public infrastructure.
At least the US still has energy infrastructure, while the EU is forced to financially support Dictators in Tehran and Moscow to keep their economy from collapsing.
This article is literally about Europe rapidly building out its sovereign energy infrastructure?
EVs are still a bit underwhelming wrt range - ideally either 450miles/700km or 5 minute 20->80% recharge at an acceptable price (35k EUR) should be the norm. For cities it doesn't matter but for longer vacation trips it's a must, nobody wants to waste 3 hours on a 1100km trip recharging. Chinese EVs might be able to deliver it at this price point (BYD) but EU adds additional (up to) 45% in extra fees to penalize Chinese EV makers and to prevent collapse of EU car makers.
Honest question, how often do you drive 1100km?
On average once a month? Going skiing/biking in the mountains for the weekend or to some sea/lake with a boat.
That’s a very unusual usage pattern.
I assume that's the comment you wanted to make all the time.
1 in 4 vehicles sold globally last year were EVs, and they are >50% of the monthly sales in China, the largest market in the world. EVs are mostly solved, even though they will continue to rapidly improve, both range and charging infrastructure. Norway is at ~100% monthly EV sales, other countries will get there eventually.
Importantly, we should expect to go faster as EV sales reach a point where combustion sales have declined to a level where they can no longer support combustion vehicle manufacturers as a going concern. Peak global combustion auto sales occurred in 2017.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47459145 (citations)
The trend is clear but right now they aren't able to replace ICE cars due to what I mentioned above. Either they lack range/recharging convenience or they don't but are too expensive. They need a few more years of scaling or EU to stop penalizing Chinese EVs.
That 25% is including ICE. From the reference:
> “Electric cars” include battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles
ICE =! NEVs (which includes BEVs and PHEVs, with BEVs still the majority). If folks want to buy PHEVs until BEVs steamroll them, whatevs, the BEV cost decline and uptake curves speak for themselves. Combustion isn't getting cheaper anytime soon.
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/03/global-ev-sales-leaders...
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-car-sales-battery-p...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/car-sales
Yeah Europeans are going to stick to their little diesel city cars.
Many Europeans cannot afford iPhones as they are an overpriced costly luxury there, yet I'm supposed to believe they're all going out tomorrow to buy solar panels. Right.
Heat pumps? They're famous for hating air conditioning and mostly heat their homes with hydronic, but whatever.
A complete 900W solar setup you can put on your balcony, plug into an outlet and cover a good chunk of your energy needs costs 200 Euros: https://shop-sicatron.de/products/sicatron-910w-balkonkraftw...
It's thoroughly practical, especially with energy prices being what they are now.
Unclear what Apple's pricing policy has to do with this,.
That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.
I'm shocked that safety-conscious Europe—especially Germany, known for its strict rules—would allow this.
Or is this more AliExpress garbage with a German flag glued to it?
A lively Hackaday discussion from yesterday on this very topic:
https://hackaday.com/2026/03/31/solar-balconies-take-europe-...
Sounds like the US might have a problem with overregulation holding them back, then?
Astonishingly, this is one case where the Germans have got the regulation right.
> That sounds extremely dangerous; you cannot add PV (or any secondary source) in the US and connect it to utility power without it being done by an electrician and inspected by the city.
This is factually inaccurate. Utah was the first to legalize plug in solar, and 17 other states have legislation pending to do so. It sounds like you are unaware of regulations around islanding in both Europe and the US. This is a solved problem.
> The biggest regulatory concern – energizing lines during an outage and putting line workers at risk – is not really an issue, since inverters are covered by UL 1741, and have “anti-islanding” capability.
UL 3700 specifically addresses plug in solar risks and mitigating them.
Resources on the topic below:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/03/27/the-theory-and-practi...
https://solarunitedneighbors.org/resources/what-to-know-abou...
https://www.ul.com/news/ul-solutions-debuts-testing-and-cert...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NANIjW3yGsFhpNTzvg30kMHo...
https://permitpower.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2026/01/...
https://www.cesa.org/resource-library/resource/plug-in-solar...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/balcony-solar-tak...
https://www.brightsaver.org/publicly-filed-states
https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/anti-islanding-and-smart...
I have a set of solar panels and a "hydronic" heat pump, despite living all the way up at 56N in the maybe-Europe UK. We also have access to both cheap Chinese EVs and the increasingly acceptable EU ones, like the Renault 5.
The only reason people skip the iPhone here is because it is directly associated with being an asshole. Sent from my heatpump-heated home in the Julian Alps.