this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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I've always been supportive of solar. After all, if the Sun goes out, we got bigger problems than charging our cell phones.
I've had many, many people over the years tell me it's too expensive, not efficient enough, etc., and I always said that research will fix all that, and someday it would work great, AND be economical. I never figured it would be because Trump would fuck up the energy economics of the entire planet, and solar would suddenly be the best choice.
I don’t think it was even a matter of research, or it least it hasn’t been for a while, more it’s a matter of scaling production and competitive supply chains.
If there are 15 steps to produce a panel and you need to make 20% profit to pay off the capital expense and cover fixed costs, then the final product is going to be expensive, if the scale is large enough to afford to only make 1% profit at every step things get cheap.