Solar passes nuclear, but US install costs lag
A chart-backed story says solar capacity is becoming bigger than nuclear. Commenters pushed on the US gap. One asked why they keep getting $20k install quotes when hardware looks cheap, and blamed labor and add-on costs. Another said they're more excited for the day the same is said about storage, because solar that makes it through the night and cloudy days is the real prize.
The pattern: the hardware curve is solved, and the bottleneck moved to installation, permitting, and storage. Related hardware threads show smaller versions of this. The new iPad mini was criticized for a roughly 40% price rise over pre-June pricing, a 60Hz display, and 128GB of base storage. The Advanced Photonics Coalition is pushing standards to speed photonics manufacturing, and commenters said packaging photonic chips into devices has long been the key issue.
Standards and soft costs, not the core technology, decide how fast these markets move.
So what?
The opportunity in energy is in install software, permitting, financing, and storage, where US costs are still high. In hardware generally, watch for standards bodies and supply-chain shifts, because they unlock markets before the chips do.