I honestly think renewables will grow exponentially from now all fosil fuel is dead.
We just have to be careful there. My fellow Europeans here will remember what resulted out of depending on an adversary for energy, in our case Russian NG. We don't want another energy crisis as the result of geopolitical tensions.
We shouldn't import foreign DRM, our critical infrastructure should not utilize foreign-hosted or proprietary IoT, and we should invest in local manufacturing utilizing automation.
Solar panels and batteries are a stock. Oil is a flow. This leads to a very different dependency situation.
If you're concerned about energy sovereignty, just buy more solar panels now. If you're still concerned, buy even more. Keep buying them until you're not concerned anymore.
Nobody can prevent your country/region from developing own solar or battery supply chains. Alternatively, buy from other countries that are not China for a little bit more.
" 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."
Inverters aren’t a problem. China produces roughly half of them worldwide iirc. They’re dominant but you can source from elsewhere without an issue.
LiFePO4 is almost purely China, but those will last you 20 years, which is roughly 365 times as long as if you’re cut off from oil.
Grid storage has yet to find the cheapest storage per acre regardless of weight (which doesn't matter if they're not going to move) and solar -> thermal (underground) -> electricity (months later) is still being trialled (sort of, there's been decades of such usage at one site (IIRC)).
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.
Germany has directly funded anti-nuclear groups in other European countries.
https://www.ege.fr/sites/ege.fr/files/media_files/German_Int...
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.
May 3 (Reuters) - The Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Sunday that a drone had targeted its external radiation control laboratory.
This is not the first event targeting nuclear plants/laboratory. Given the current geopolitical situation, nuclear plants are in danger of being targeted on purpose and the damage would be considerable.
But let's look at how Big Tech assesses the risks. Hyperscalers employ top-tier analysts; they perfectly see the difference between media noise and actual damage.
Attacking an NPP is fundamentally unprofitable. It’s an asset worth tens of billions of dollars, and any rational capital (just like a state) will protect it. What we’re seeing right now — and I’d like to point out this isn't the first time — are strikes on non-critical external nodes. It’s a tool for informational pressure, not an attempt to trigger a second Chernobyl.
In reality, a direct strike on the reactor's containment is a taboo. In military doctrine, it’s equated to the use of radiological weapons, which instantly triggers protocols for uncontrolled escalation. None of the key actors want that.
Has Big Tech already poured money into nuclear? Fact? Fact. Not because they’re blind to geopolitics, but because the math of deterrence works: the risk of deliberately destroying an NPP equals the risk of starting World War III, at which point nobody is going to care about the fate of AI investments anyway.
Let's also take this fact into account: the risk of an attack on an NPP in an active war zone (Ukraine) is simply not comparable to the risk for an NPP in Pennsylvania or Texas.
Personally, I have nothing against green energy, but economics and physics are harsh realities.
I'd love to trust this, I really do, but there are political leaders publicly threatening to erase civilisations. I live in Europe. It is still forbidden here to harvest wild mushrooms. Dead animals are burned, not eaten. To us, this is a possible reality
nearly zero capital will go into nuclear energy, unless it can be made a lot more affordable. It is structurally completely uncompetitive, and uninvestable without massive state backing.
Given the hysteria involved in Great Power warmongering circles, much of it designed to increase military-industrial outlays, this is highly unlikely at present, especially in the USA where fossil fuel demand destruction is something the investors in the fracking boom and the oilfield and refinery operators don’t want to see, just look at Exxon and Chevron profits over the past month. I doubt the affiliated investor-owned utilities would be thrilled about an explosion in US rooftop solar installations either, as that cuts directly into their revenue stream.
Now, if you want to build monocrystalline Si PV at scale from scratch to catch up to China, that’s going to take a lot of investment over a decade, and given the historical and present reluctance of the US government to fund such R & D at scale (tiny DOE budgets), it’s all going to be private, and private rentier-finance capital is not going to fund a major competitor to fossil fuels in the USA - margins are tighter, you replace a commodity stream with a one-time purchase of equipment with a minimum 20-yr lifespan, and unless you tightly control the equipment and the electrical generation, there go your rents, I mean profits.
being from a 3rd world country and having lived in Europe & the US.
you quickly learn there's nothing called an adversary when adopting technology.
you adopt what works - ruminating about where something comes from, is a luxury.
then after you can either work towards self-sufficiency or keep being vulnerable.
Europe has been kept in this loop of talking about problems while not solving them.
the US - knowin' about the problems, but actively ignoring them due to politics.
For example:
"Apple is considered the "Great Teacher" of China for playing a pivotal role in upgrading the nation's industrial, manufacturing, and technological skills over the past 25 year"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/review/apple-in-chi...
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.
Nuclear? Good luck building it on time and on budget. Also where exactly are you getting that Uranium from? I’m not necessarily against nuclear I just don’t think there’s much you can do in five or ten years to move the needle with Nuclear.
Wind? Actually a good option as it has a strong domestic supply chain.
Solar? Buy China’s cheap panels as long as they are selling. If they stop selling figure out how to do it yourself. It’s not some big mystery how panels get made, China just had the foresight to invest in the scale required to drive prices down.
Coal? I mean at least it’s local. But solar + batteries are either beating it now or will be in the next few years if the same trends that have held for the last 30 years continue for the next 2-5. So you’d be investing in a more expensive, dirtier technology for what end?
There is no world where you get to not make a decision and the risk just disappears. I think renewables have the clear advantage here and have very manageable risks.
Uranium can be stockpiled relatively easily (france had 4-5 years of uranium stockpiled). Since it is about 1% of the energy cost, that’s pretty inexpensive.
Also, uranium comes from suppliers on 4 different continents, there is little chance that it becomes unavailable overnight.
What’s stopping us from stockpiling solar panels?
Stockpiling uranium addresses a specific risk related to sourcing in an inexpensive way, I'm not sure what problem you address by stockpiling unused solar panels, and for what cost.
As someone who lives in Canada, we have reactors (CANDU) that can run on unprocessed / unenriched uranium.
Or you can use slightly enriched if you want:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANFLEX#Fuel_composition_and_v...
If you have a bunch of pesky plutonium that you want to get rid of, it can also be mixed into a MOX bundle and be 'burned away' as well.
France being more relevant as largest % of nuclear as part of their energy mix ...
As I replied in the comment to the "french doesn't need", apparently either they care more about money and less about Ukraine or they absolutely couldn't but the numbers don't lie (if they were wrong the government would have challenge le monde asap ...)...
Also globally it's "about 6% of global uranium production, 20% of conversion capacity, 46% of enrichment capacity, and 10% of nuclear fuel fabrication capacity.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2...
Next time I will use we ~ humanity to be more clear and avoid exceptions to the "big picture"
Have a great evening
France has reduced it in the last couple of years but even right now they do.
I could only find that EU manufacturers of solar panels wanted tariffs on imported Chinese solar panels and EU builders and operators of solar power plants didn't want tariffs on imported Chinese solar panels.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-solar-industry-at-wa...
I mean the EU has ASML, the Large Hadron Collider, and ITER, among other things. There is no engineering talent problem.
If they couldn’t do it it’s a political problem.
Engineers who know how to build factories, batteries, and solar panels could sit down and create a "war plan" to build out and scale infrastructure quickly if you asked them to do it and then got out of the way.
The EU has plenty of talent with the know-how to do this. If it couldn't be done even in a crisis situation, that's a political problem.
the only interesting parts here from a supply chain perspective are power transistors. europeans have been known to design these, but idk how easy it would be to start producing them locally. they have macroscopic feature sizes though.
it would take several years of iteration to get a functioning pipeline that ran at volume, but none of this is hugely complicated. certainly not decades.
the real problem is financialization. you have to float that plant with the understanding that its not going to be competitive.
But that's residential scale: at grid scale these things wouldn't be online in the same way anyway.
"However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said. Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said."
It would not suprise me if not only Chinese manufacurers did this. Cellular modems are cheap and and the capability to cause blackout is very usefull.
Any such installations of solar panels, batteries and the like must be interconnected only in a private network without Internet access.
For remote monitoring and control a proxy mini-PC must be used, to which one should use an authenticated and encrypted connection.
For any competent person, this is trivial to do today, to ensure that even if some electronic device includes a backdoor for its vendor that backdoor cannot be accessed.
If there exists any kind of wireless connection provided by the vendor for a device, it must be disabled, e.g. by removing any internal or external antennas. Unlike wired connections that can be filtered externally, wireless connections cannot be secured.
Dependency is only problematic if you lack an alternative, and nobody is developing alternatives.
My gawd, lots of people in Netherlands want to contribute to the green ecosystem but govt can't even get permitting straight and everything is gridlocked. The electric grid is full and new houses and companies can't be connected to the grid, wnd if you want to install a heat pump or an AC then there are thousands of rules and anybody else in the neighborhood can block you for the slightest thing.
Less talking and more doing. The Chinese at least are all do and almost no talk.
I'm happy the OP was able to take advantage of the current prices, cheap technology, and the amicable perfidious relationship. I would avoid anything internet-connected for good reason, and of course, burying anything in our infrastructure.
How have you still not learned? By god Europe's in an awful place if you still don't get it.
You first import them en masse. You reverse engineer, learn how to do everything. Then you slowly invest in local manufacturing. China has shown you the way.
German industry does not want to pay anyone, imports cheap foreigners for tasks that have to be done in Germany and outsources the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution_in_the_U...
Chinese industrial policy: dominate world of manufacturing (consumer goods, light industry, heavy industry, hardware, software , everything), aquire technology and know-how by any means necessary (buy technology, companies, joint-ventures, espionage, send students abroad and return them), move supply chains as much as possible to China (buy raw minerals, mines, mining rights, ship ores back to China for refining and processing), become independent of other countries as much as possible (prefer domestic coal, gas, oil, domestic synthetic fuels, in the long term minimalize all imports).
By all means, it would be great if EU countries ramp up their own production of batteries and solar panels. But this is worlds apart of depending on fuel from Russia.
Sure, it's great to be independent when you can, but of all the groups you depend on, and all the ways you depend on them, this doesn't rank high!
If Russia stops gas deliveries you are immediately without energy.
If China stops exporting your PV and battery while just continue to work for 20 years.
If you buy a solar panel, it produces power for the next 20-50 years. It doesn't require constant flow from China. If China suddenly decides to stop buying solar panels (why would they?) then what? Nothing. Your solar panels still produce power.
It's particularly bizarre when the alternative is supply lines to countries like Russia and the GCC countries. Russia tried to use Europe's natural gas dependency to invade Ukraine. That's still ongoing.
And what has China done that warrants a similar kind of fear? Absolutely nothing other than the US has declared China an enemy for some reason.
I know it sounds like satire, but there is a good reason tech exploded in the US 30 years ago while Europe is still making cars like it's the 1960's.
So boycott HN?
Except our European counterparts, they still get ~$75k for it. But I guess "progress" because if they lose their job and bake bread instead not much in their life will change...
And Germany.
In the 2000s, when solar PV was still very expensive, Germany accounted for two-thirds of global installations, and so helped get the ball rolling on scaling up.