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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.

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The price of panels is falling so fast I don’t think anyone truly understands.

I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.

They are cheaper than fencing material, and will continue to decline in price.

And, credit where credit is due, it's all thanks to China.

The one country that still produces goods rather than switching to complete financialization!

"How are you so successful?" "Oh, well, we build you know. It's a dying art. Have you tried it?"

Just to point out, but producing goods in exchange for pieced of paper is a weak system, especially if it's focus is export and not internal consumption, see Germany, Japan, Italy or China, all slowing down due to their reliance on exports.

To stay strong, you have to keep exercising your muscles or they will atrophy. To stay smart, you have to keep exercising your brain. To be able to produce stuff, you have to keep producing stuff no matter which country it goes to.

2022-11-28 - “About 2.6 million Uyghur and Kazakh people have been subjected to coercion, “re-education programs” and internment in the Xinjiang region of north-west China, which is the source of 40-45% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon. A report by the United Nations office of the high commissioner for human rights three months ago found Xinjiang was home to “serious human rights violations”, and the US has listed polysilicon from China as a material likely to have been produced by child or forced labour.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/evidence...

2024-08-27 - Indian solar panels face US scrutiny for possible links to China forced labor

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indian-solar-panels-...

2025-04-30 - Human Rights in the Life Cycle of Renewable Energy and Critical Minerals

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/c...

The US has forced [1] and child [2] labor as well. It's certainly not welcome, but context is important when casting the first stone.

[1] Forced prison labor in the “Land of the Free” - https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/ - January 16th, 2025

[2] [US] Child labor law violations are at their highest in decades. - https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/05/01/... - May 1st, 2024

(staunchly anti child and forced labor to be clear)

I mean I don't exactly have great news for you about the human rights situations in major oil-producing countries either. Not to do whataboutism, but if your energy source is going to implicate you in human rights abuses either way, you might as well take the clean renewable one.

It's convenient the Islamic countries don't seem to mind their coreligonists being persecuted here, especially as these people haven't launched military invasions of neighboring regions.

Islamic countries, especially the Arab ones barely said anything in face of the genocide in Gaza.

Hell, more journalists have died reporting in Gaza than in WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan combined and nobody gives two damns.

Many Hamas members had day-jobs as “journalists”, meaning they worked on producing content for Hamas. Many of them took part in the invasion of Israel on Oct 7th taking selfies with and clips of the gruesome massacres as they were unfolding.

People keep saying that prices of panels keep falling, and yet any time I look at getting panels on my roof the price is the same $3/W it has been for 10 years already.

Buying the panels yourself, or an install company supplying them?

What country?

In 10 years the price has fallen dramatically, you’re getting majorly ripped off.

The prices are falling at the source, but free trade was never real; and it's even less so today. By the time these panels reach your roof, all kinds of fees and taxes have been tacked on. You'll be paying the maximal extractable amount.

The panel price doesn't matter. It's the installation and the surroundings (electrical setup, converter, battery) that determine the price nowadays.

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