Stock vs flow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_and_flow

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.

In a snap of a finger, Big C will absolutely cut your fingers off and the technology you love off in order to fuel its imperialistic whims. Anything bordering the South China Sea is in their mind, already theirs, you know because of ancient empires or something.

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.

Yes, scare mongering for panels and batteries which last 25 - 50 years or forever with zero input fuel needed after the install. Yay to fossil fuels which are needed continuously, billions of tons per year.

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.

> resulted out of depending on an adversary

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.

Not quite the same, a solar panel installed doesn’t disappear if China changes their stance.

> 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.

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.

This is _completely_ different.

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.

This really seems like straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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!

This is just foolishness in the modern world. A realistic trade policy would accept China getting AMSL nano-scale chip production machines in exchange for American manufacturers getting Chinese monocrystalline-ingot production machines.

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.

it would be pretty straightforward to match up panels from any source to controllers free m local national sources

How about you focus on increasing your own cheap production first instead of focusing on whether depency is problematic?

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.

sodium, unlike oil, is availible everywhere, along with silicone/sand which ,thanks to China for showing the way!,can be bootstrapped into a fully fosil fuelless grid. lets be clear, this is not like setting up a city on mars, this is in the determined hobbiest in there garage level tech so buy from China TODAY, heck, they will even sell you a turn key factory to build your own stuff!, also, TODAY!

The fearmongering around China is truly wild.

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.

All Europe has to do is let young people become billionaires with limited liability and an unencumbered team selection.

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.