Hacker News Reader

Comment by huijzer | Hacker News Reader

> I'm sorry this post is probably not what you were hoping for but electricity is really really dangerous […].

People probably discouraged the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, and Thomas Edison too for safety reasons.

Don’t be discouraged OP. If you want to do it, go for it.

The Wright Brothers owned a mechanical shops for a decade specialising in printing press and bicycles before building gliders and prototype for years. They had a lot of experience in manufacturing.

Earhart had been a pilot for eight years before attempting to cross the Atlantic.

The only exemple of someone entering a highly regulated industry without being an insider I can think of is Musk and SpaceX and even then he was previously rich, started by building the connection which would allow him to get public funds through the Mars Society and his first move was hiring Tom Mueller, an industry insider.

In my experience, people with a software background who don’t have an industrial background heavily underestimate the complexity involved.

This is a regulated industry where as soon as you touch high-power generation, generally both the plans and the actual installation need to be done and/or reviewed by certified personnel or everything they build will be prohibited to connect to the network and thus simply worthless. This is not a domain where random experimentation is permitted. Their first step should be hiring someone who knows the relevant local regulations and can advise them on what is and isn't an acceptable way to proceed in their specific regulatory environment, because currently not only they don't know how to do it, they don't even know which things they are absolutely required to know.

Yes, there are specific parallels to the Wright brothers - if you want to make and fly a plane exactly like the Wright brothers did, well, you can't simply do that anymore, you need to follow FAA regulations and safety standards which didn't exist back then; and recommending that someone "just do it" would be irresponsible.

I wonder if there is an opportunity to deregulate whatever that makes sense and isn’t related to safety. I don’t know anything about Energy industry but like any industry, I’m positive that there is a lot of crud and inefficiencies built up over time.

There is opportunity to do a lot of things, but it'll never happen unless it gets tied into some broader agenda. "Enabling the common man to run their own power company" isn't something that gets people to the polls, so I seriously doubt it'll ever happen.

See also: those "crazy/wacky/funny laws in <city/state/country>" books and listicles that feature antiquated laws that are still on the books (some of which are most certainly unconstitutional) but nobody cares about enforcing them, so there exists no political will to repeal them.

A bit off-topic, but: does the FAA really have authority over airspace up to 10 meters high? For non-commercial self-created craft operated by their constructor? When used far from civilisation?

They definitely have authority at 30 feet above the surface, but the wright bros aircraft likely would operate under part 103 which governs ultralights and is fairly lax on regulation as long as you aren't operating near restricted airspace.

For example, with an ultralight you do not need any sort of pilot's license or medical certificate.

EDIT: Actually the wright bros aircraft would be too heavy to qualify as ultralight nowadays. But with today's materials I'd bet if they did it again they could get it under the weight limit.

Well, nobody had ever flown a plane before the Wright brothers.

Civilization has had grid scale electrical power for over a hundred years. It’s sheer hubris to ignore the fact that this is a mature industry with experts that have studied the problem for decades.

I suggest you read the book "The Innovation Stack." It's a presents a good alternative to the "Hubris" argument, with specific examples related to quite established industries.

The person asking isn’t trying to innovate, just do what other people are already doing (which is cool; I make my living doing what millions of people do very similarly.)

Those folks knew they were pushing the envelope and were aware of the risks involved. OP is looking to enter a well understood space that already exists. Getting themselves killed in the process wouldn't be in the noble pursuit of bettering humanity or anything like that... It would just be ignorance of well known/understood risks.

Are you just trolling OP or do really think the advice about learning how this works before you bankrupt or electrocute yourself is somehow flawed?

Not to me tonight your examples are a bit off. This is nowhere like the first powered flight. Earhart when missing swing her risky thing and was never seen again. Edison intentionally extracted large animals to drive artificial fear over the safety of AC, not to mention many of his most famous inventions are considered to be the fruit of his employees rather than his own intellect.

People have also discouraged thousands of non-famous people who got in over their head in a dangerous domain and killed themselves.

Also, the people you cite had expert level knowledge in their field when they built novel projects; they weren't asking beginner questions on HN.

Yes, don't be discouraged. But don't be clueless. It is possible to do it safely, of course

Yeah, OP. You know so little about this subject matter that you are Asking HN. But you could be the next Edison! I mean it’s possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com