spinnetrouble

I have the same concerns over geothermal fracking right now. We’re only willing to find out how much we can disrupt the underlying rock by going too far a few times, deliberating over the acceptable death and damage toll, and then deciding to stop doing that whenever ~40% of the country agrees it’s time to stop.

A quick way to stop the use of cheap and unsafe products is to introduce legislation that has safety standards and a certification body like UL that they have to meet before they can be sold.

I totally agree that we have to put in some serious effort to make this a safe and workable thing. I’m not on the libertarian side of things where it’s like, “Pshh! Get the products out there and let the market figure it out!” because… I mean, geez, our housing situation is bad enough without burning down any more of them. But we do need the legislation to get us some movement. We need safe, reliable products that can at least compare with a first model year car in terms of operability and not perfection. We’re more than a decade behind in this area, we’re losing more ground by the day, our government is doing whatever illegal shit they can think of to try to stop it entirely, and we can’t afford this.

I appreciate your hesitation. I do think that we’re gonna continue to see the shift in warfare to attacking civilians through infrastructure, like what Russia is doing to Ukraine right now by knocking out the power and heat to homes to kill as many vulnerable people as possible, and we make a much easier target than anything military exactly like you said. The sheer variability in people’s views on personal security is enough to give a person with the drive and smarts a way in, never mind how they actually behave.

Caution is warranted, and so is starting to legislate and produce balcony solar products. The first model year of any new car is a stress test, and they take the problems owners have had and work to refine it. Similarly, I don’t install a brand new operating system without at least one or two updates under its belt. 😅 We can do the same for balcony solar to harden it against hacking and improve safety, but I think it’s valid to worry about whether or not the grid itself could cope with an attack. Like Jesus, would it ever suck to find out it couldn’t after the fact!

I’m on board. It doesn’t have to be perfectly idiotproof to be rolled out–nothing is ever going to be perfectly idiotproof and we’re already being compelled to beta test things like Tesla’s poorly-designed self-driving software for its ability to handle human drivers and AI companies’ chatbots. Balcony solar has been in wide use in Europe, where many homes are much, much older than ours, for more than a decade now. We can look at their ideas, products, and safety standards and import and adapt them to meet our own needs pretty easily.

Fire safety is, of course, going to be critical. The way homeowners make decisions when they upgrade is like the Wild West out here, and not every system is going to work for every home. We can only do the best we can in the arena of safety, you know? We make a good faith effort to protect everybody as much as we can, but at some point, the homeowner needs to take responsibility for knowing what their wiring/electric situation is before trying to make big changes to it without an electrician. We lose a few houses every single year from people using turkey fryers improperly despite them having all the information they need not to do that.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is the computerized station that comes with a lot of these balcony solar systems to ensure proper loading, prevent pulling too much power, and to make sure you’re not feeding the grid when you need the power or pulling power from the grid when you don’t need it. Kind of weird that they skipped over that important piece of fire safety and risk management. There’s also a device called Ting you can get that plugs into your wall and notifies you of fire hazards and electrical problems. (It’s completely separate from balcony solar; I got mine through my homeowner’s insurance and they can be bought online.) Another thing that passing this legislation will help is developing a solid set of safety standards. Without the legislation, there won’t be enough social or political pressure to do it and could slow future adoption down by years.

Given the strain power utilities are under with the AI bubble, it seems irresponsible that they’re not pushing harder for this.