My shack is a historical landmark?

The world knows that Germans are photon-crazy, with solar thermal and photovoltaic installations racing from one record year of new capacity to the next.

They modified building regulations to promote installation of small solar facilities, and their subsidies for photovoltaics are legendary and expensive.

Before we make fun of local government again, we want to highlight a brilliant little internet site run by just that local government.

Counties have a "solar register", a map/Google Earth like website that shows how well suited for a solar installation each and every property is.

You enter an address, and you get an aerial photo with roof surfaces marked in colors telling you if a building is perfect, well-suited, somewhat suited or not suited for a solar installation.

The eco-friendly building code changes allow solar installations on pretty much any building that is not in the historical landmark registry of a county.

Much of the old building inventory got destroyed by wars, natural disasters and general stupidity or greed -- "I'm sorry, that wrecking ball was not properly secured, we really meant to preserve that small chapel in the middle of the supermarket parking lot. So sorry." **

But there is lots of old stuff around for the tourists to marvel at and for the locals to finally embrace despite the fact that it is "impractical", or "so much more work to maintain".

So, try to imagine the shock of building owners when they submitted a pro-forma permit application for their swanky new solar installation: denied, reason: historical landmark.

Come on, you are telling me this crooked barn less than one hundred years old is a historical landmark?

Damn it, it's a shed, my grandfather built it, he didn't even have a permit.

Are you out of your minds, you bureaucrats, you!

As it turned out, the county's register of historical landmarks had quietly undergone steady inflation. Nobody had noticed because nobody had told the property owners.

Only a permit application would bring it to light.

This unintended side effect of the race to solar was, in the end, quite beneficial. The fact that many buildings had been added to the register only recently and the number of complaints did, let's say, facilitate trimming of the landmark register.

** True story. The machinist refused to do as told, so the decidedly more clumsy company owner himself mounted the rig and did what needed to be done.

[Update 9/2015] added ** true story text.