
Robot-Installed Solar Panels Cut Costs by 50% - ph0rque
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/robotinstalled-solar-panels-cut-costs-by-50
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robomartin
Right. The Germans and Japanese are trenching new territory applying
innovating construction technologies. Here in the US we will fail to even
attempt to launch anything even remotely close to this because unions will
raise hell and they'll get politicians to protect their ridiculously expensive
jobs. Of course, private industry unions will be joined by government worker
unions who will vie for their portion of the "screw the American people" fund
and the rest will be history. Just ask Boeing how painful it is to actually
clash with these forces. I was secretly hoping that they'd say "fuck it, we
are moving all of our operations to Canada" or some such thing. Only something
of that scale will finally send the message to washington and our voters that
unions need to go the way of the dodo bird as fast as we can possibly make it
happen.

Free market innovation rocks. Anything else is a straight road to third world
nation status.

~~~
nl
Wow. Bit of an anti-union, anti-government agenda there?

1) Solar panel installation is a highly non-unionized field. Almost all is
done by independent contractors.

2) The technology behind these robot installations was developed because of
government programs to increase solar use. Germany: _Robotic help could be a
plus given Germany's ambitious plans to get a third of its electricity from
renewable sources within eight years and 80 percent by 2050_ and Japan: _The
government of Japan commissioned PV Kraftwerker to develop a version of its
robot that could install a solar power plant largely on its own in radioactive
areas near the site of the Fukushima nuclear-plant disaster. Gattenlöhner says
the Japanese government wants the robot within six months._

Based on that evidence, it might appear that the problem in the US might be
not unionism, but a lack of government intervention in funding applications
for new technologies. I'm not going to say I fully agree with that claim, but
it's something worth considering....

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robomartin
> Wow. Bit of an anti-union, anti-government agenda there?

Absolutely. They are both responsible for a lot of what ails us today in the
US. Government is incompetent and is only concerned with remaining in power
through selling out to special interests. Unions are massively destructive of
industries through, effectively, extorting pay and benefits that ultimately
kill the goose. Check out what is going on in California with cities filing
bankruptcy to a large extent due to ridiculous union worker pensions. No
business person would pay any worker 70, 80 or 90% of their annual pay for
life unless: a) union extortion by force of strikes and other activities or;
b) government stuffing their own pockets and pandering to private and
government unions by granting contracts, pay and benefits to government union
workers that make no arithmetic sense in any universe.

I have seen massive solar projects done in my town. The costs are staggering.
The labor is fully unionized. The money is handed down purely through
political party channels.

The panels are all Chinese (so the "American Reinvestment Act" is really a
"Let's shovel money to China Act".

These projects are luxurious beyond belief. A couple of them covered entire
school parking lots with solar cells. Another entailed the same sort of thing
with the addition of refurbishing and redoing the entire electrical system of
the attached government building where, maybe, two hundred people work.

This building was brand-new before they started. They shoveled money into it
and created something that no private enterprise would even consider building
due to the, again, basic arithmetic or the deal: There is no possible way to
recover the investment in our lifetime. If going construction / T.I. costs are
in the order of $200 per square foot, these people (our government) probably
spent $1,000 per square foot on this one project. This is down-right criminal.

