this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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Just a small remark: In Germany, we had this discussion and all time-and-money-winning discussions already. We are through it.
It‘s safe. If you know some Germans, you might have an idea that we looked into and discussed every single screw and aspect of those systems.
Everybody buys those cool PV‘s. We even got a nationwide law that nobody (even not your landlord of your appartement) can stop you to plug it in your home grid.
Buy it. Install it. Love it.
No, you dont understand, we can't just look elsewhere to find examples that have been shown to work well, we have to spend all our money on developing a completely parallel set of rules and regulations from the ground up because of ... reasons.
It's the same thing with bike lanes: every city spends the whole budget on doing "studies" of different designs rather that just building the exact designs that the Dutch have perfected.
In this case, the unfortunate thing is we can't just buy German gear since the voltage and frequency of our grids are different.
There might also be some issues with how things are wired.
A lot of Europeans are under the impression that the American power grid distributes 110 volts. It doesn't, it distributes 220. Our transformers are center-tapped, the center tap is considered neutral and the other two hot. Measure between the hots, you get 220, which is how we power big things like stoves and HVAC and such, normal outlets are wired between neutral and one of the hots.
The US has plug and socket standards for 220. You'd think you could take something like a British kettle, nip the weird British plug off of it, put an American 220 plug on it, and plug it into one of those 220 sockets, right? A resistive heater like a kettle doesn't care about the AC frequency. It might care that what it thinks is the Neutral wire has 110V potential from Ground.
We did that. We've already done that part, it's finished! We have standards and guidelines.
This is such a frustrating wait!