If anything, I think the bulk of the flexibility will come from the addition of new greener power sources, plus NOT shutting down the old ones but keeping them either at a minimum or suspended.
The eco legislation in Europe in the past years is the perfect example of how not to do things. They kept going with more stringent regulation after covid, lockdowns and massive financial aids, when the likelihood of an economic crisis was high.
In my country (Romania) in a moment of revolutionary enthusiasm, the local law passed to fulfill the wider european legislation had specific phrasing to permanently close existing power plants, with no option to ever reopen them. Talk about misreading the flow. And now we're a net importer of power, even as we're one of the most power-rich countries around.
UA24 is prime example, the crowdsoured funds have helped disburse funds collected in both fiat and bitcoin (after a massive influx from various crypto communities early on in the war) for on the ground purposes; Zelensky just got confirmation of the EU and US funds last night and spoke [0] of a website tat was launched for centers for citizens to go that will have access to heat and electricity throughout the country in pharmacies and grocery stores as the shelling continues by Russia and keeps causin blackouts (Russia struck again today causing blackouts all the way to Moldova) .
It's possible, and i really hope such a thing never happens anywhere else, but their is a reason why Bitcoin was the prefered way of getting funds into the country when the UA central bank put capital controls on the first day of invasion: BTC was there since the Maidan Revolution in 2013 and had been battle tested, so when the Russian invasion happened it was battle tested and it was deployed to start doing evac and other emergency services that continue to this day.
In short, despite the inept bleating from so many in these circles: Bitcoin (the network) isn't solely the affectation of techbros and grifters in Japan or the Bahamas, it was battle hardened in conflicts and environmental catastrophe.
I fear, however, that despite these microloans geopolitics plays a much bigger role in getting infrastructure put in places like Africa since China has been exercising it's soft=power colonialsm policy for decades in order to pay off despots and have access to rare-earths. It's just another example of how the technological side of things may have been resolved, bu things like kleptocracy and nepotism prevent it from having the impact that it can and should have at addressing an issue.
I personally don't think renewables will be able to fill the gap for us. For one thing, transporting all the wind-generated power from the likes of Dobruja to Western Romania and Transylvania using existing power-transport infrastructure is no easy task. Second, I don't see solar taking over, for the simple reason that the fields from Southern Romania which it would best to use for such task are of greater use to agriculture (from an economics pov, that is).
On a more general note, we, Romanians, already have past history related to this, not a successful one at that. I'm talking of the period after the 1970s oil-shock crisis and of the '80s in their entirety, when the then government was very aware of the energy problem and was also very actively trying to tackle it and, in a way, solve it. That's why the discourse that we now hear from the West is in many ways familiar to us Romanians (only numbers with odd cars which should be allowed travel during weekends, energy "rationalization" etc), i.e. because we have been in that place before them (and failed).
There are several books from that period who explain the problem in detail and which also write about possible solutions. Most of them are from Editura Politica, such as Energy in a finite world [2], published in 1983, but one of the best, imo, is this one: "Energy, whereto?" [3], published in 1978, that has a very comprehensive list of almost all of the solutions that were available back then. It's very interesting that they also talk about shale gas, and about how it's not a recommended solution because it generates mini-earthquakes (they might have also mentioned the heavy water-use as a negative, I don't remember exactly).
Of course, when the mini-earthquakes did indeed happen in the early 2010s when we try to extract shale-gas in Eastern Romania the powers that be all acted surprised, like "what could all of this have happened?". It's not like there had been actual books written about the subject 30 years prior by people who most probably were still around in one way or another. Which would bring me to one of the most important problems we know have, i.e. the lack of specialists on the subject, but this post is already getting too long.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8953743,23.1365373,18333m/da...
[2] https://www.targulcartii.ro/wolf-hafele/energia-intr-o-lume-...
[3] https://www.targulcartii.ro/i-popescu/energia-incotro-scrisu...
Yes, as part of that mix we had some horribly dirty old school plants. I'm not contesting that they should be replaced per se - but the current thread is about flexibility, and the way it was done left no wiggle room whatsoever. And now we have absurdly high energy prices, Moldova is in danger of going dark, and we probably could be doing more to export power to Ukraine. All because some politicians guessed wrong, at a moment when it was already pretty clear this whole direction is dangerous. The local legislation happened, I think, only last year.
It's not a new story, politicians making bad decisions. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out when they do, especially when it's costing all of us. And speaking of, what they should really do now is unlock the solar power program - which on paper forces the utilities companies to buy back power, but in practice allows them to drag their feet indefinitely.
Can it burn wood? Nah. Biogas? Nope.
Do you have coal everywhere? As we found in Poland it's a scarce resource controlled mostly by a few parties and hard to store and transport in required bulk. I wonder how much of your coal is imported.
The proper replacement would be biofuels, if anything.
Do you mean, lack of capacity in the power lines to that regions?
> only cars with odd numbers which should be allowed travel during weekend
That was also the norm in Italy during the oil crisis. It was done more recently as an anti pollution measure too.
Yes, more exactly reaching full capacity for the existing power/energy transport infrastructure. Which transport infrastructure is not bad per se, and that's another big plus for the government that used to rule until about 30 years ago, but most probably it wasn't built with this new energy source in mind.
I would have dug deeper for a source of the Romanian power transport network, but taking into consideration the existing geo-political conditions most probably that information is getting more and more sensible by the day, so I'll leave that sharing to someone else.
> That was also the norm in Italy during the oil crisis.
Yeah, I had a geography atlas published in 1982 who also had maps related to the major countries' economic infrastructure, so to speak, i.e. where most of their industries were located, where were they generating their power/energy, stuff like that. Being the kid that I was, with no internet access because the late '80s and no TV program to speak of, I of course devoured it, so that I can remember from those maps that Italy and France each of them had one tidal power unit installed, France somewhere around Bretagne or Normandy, Italy somewhere on the Tyrrhenian coast, near Grosseto (I might be slightly off with the Grosetto thing, though).
So, yeah, different countries were trying all sorts of unconventional stuff back then (in the late '70s - early 80s), but I do have the feeling that the cheap energy that I don't know how exactly (maybe Eastern Europe getting rid of its entire industry after 1990?) was available again starting with the 1990s made us forget almost all of that, on an institutional level.
So in places like that, sure, you'd want to move out. And hopefully other Ukrainians are taking people like her into their own homes, because otherwise, what would one do if they have nowhere else to go?
Speaking of this, I'm not sure how the three Baltic states handle this. Granted, they're way smaller compared to Ukraine and they had at least 20 years (since their NATO accession) to try and untangle themselves from all that, but until now I haven't seen any article written on this subject.
Apparently to some degree they've been modernizing through the help of Western energy companies like Alstom. I have no idea how widespread this is though.
It doesn't have to, because the past 83 years has proven, over and over again that strategic bombing does not work. [1] And so far, this war is once again, proving that same point.
The purpose of those missile and drone attacks isn't to win the war by making the Ukrainian army unable to fight. The purpose is either terror, positive domestic Russian propaganda, or, most likely, it's just something keeping the Russian Aerospace Force generals busy.
[1] It doubly doesn't work when you aren't actually bombing the warmaking industrial capacity of your opponent (Which in this case is located in North America and Western Europe).
But with regards to destroying an electrical grid, it would be a very topical intro to the idea. And there's some interesting info, in that destroying a grid is proving to be much harder than one might expect. Russia is a particularly incompetent foe, much like the Pakleds in Star Trek, but even with their massive armament, and being able to target an indefensible number of positions spread over an indefensible geographic area, they have not yet been fully successfully in their technical aims of grid destruction.
And to fail at the technical aim, while also accomplishing the exact opposite of your social aim (Ukrainians are more resolved, rather than demoralized), is utterly embarrassing and pathetic.
I would guess that it was an intentional decision to avoid. Grady goes to great lengths to prevent anything political in his videos, and the Ukrainian war happens to be politically charged in America currently.
But it is a very timely issue. Maybe in a couple years, after it's no longer timely, he will dive into it a bit more, such as with damn failures, when there's a lot more solid retrospective data to look at.
Example from https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...
> The $21.7 billion in Pentagon funding is “for equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support,” according to a summary table accompanying the supplemental request.
And anyway, if the USA wants to keep benefitting from their empire they have to pay the costs to maintain and expand it. No more money, the empire shrinks and other countries take what's American now.
What would that be?
The USA de facto surrenders to Russia in the Ukraine war and Europe starts to buy gas from Russia again (if the USA can't protect us we have to buy protection somewhere else). Russia use European money to start buying European politicians again. Eventually they'll politically control all of Europe. Maybe not the UK.
China gets East Asia because a retreating USA must be seen with suspect there too.
The USA maybe keeps the Americas, which however are not very happy with them even now (the countries that don't speak English.) Some countries will try to jump ship to Russia and China. More colonial wars to follow.
Overall effect: reduced reach for American companies, products and services. A small side effect: we won't be here to discuss this on HN but on a site of another country/language. Eventually: switch to a different worldwide common language (France experienced that demotion around the 60s/70s - French was the previous lingua franca) and further reduction of reach. Eventually: a poorer USA.
Seen from outside the USA this doesn't look MAGA to me. The opposite of it. Hard to assess the impact on inequality, healthcare, tuition, etc. Maybe the USA will go the way of the European Nordic countries or they'll implode. I won't get into that.
Note that Wikipedia's statistics have China comprising just over 90% of the population of East Asia. In what possible world would China not be in control?
By analogy to the Manchus, you'd need an invasion from Japan or, I guess, Korea, that was supported by the PLA.
Military bases and alliances aren't a perfect proxy for political influence, but they're a pretty good one.
Russia's propaganda machine was caught off guard because Putin grievously miscalculated in ability to take over Ukraine, and kept the invasion so secret that there was barely any propaganda. But the propaganda campaign is kicking up again, and you can see it in some of the ghost comments on HN, even.
There are also folks caught up in pro-fascist organisations simply because they want to express their general anger at the world for not living up to their expectations.
Also, everything the media tells you is a lie to get everyone on one side.
Also, nation united against aggressive, genocidal war does great to improve cohesion and trust, and remove low level corruption.
So do that too.
"But that's socialism."
The vast majority of our support is in the form of weapons, and the vast majority of those weapons come from existing inventory.
Even the new spending is just money cycling back to US weapons manufacturers.
What good would weapons do to solve our domestic issues?
Yeah, I doubt anyone really supports Russia, it's more like you are projecting them NOT supporting Ukraine and wasting money in that blackhole of corruption as "supporting Russia".
"You are with us or against us" - there is nothing in between for Democrats/NPCs.
It's mostly a lie... but many Fox viewers believe it to be the whole truth.
I've seen discussions from a specific professor going back years (long before the actual invasion) talking about the dangers of exactly that. After it happened this specific person (forget his name) then started talking about how it was a consequence of the things he had been talking about for years.
You can disagree with the guy, but he's an academic who apparently has an expertise in that area, and I question whether or not you're dismissing it due to your own political bubble rather than because there may be some truth to it.
For example, on national TV in Russia this week, they are laying the groundwork to invade Kazakhstan right now, claiming that they need the uranium for Rosatom and that the "same nazi process in Ukraine could happen in Kazakhstan," meaning that the President of Kazakhstan is refusing to be a puppet of Putin lately.
These dynamics are extremely clear to anyone who spends even a small amount of time talking to someone from Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Chechnya, etc. But those voices are almost never heard, and instead Russian propaganda gets the air time.
Ok, I've seen an MD saying covid vaccines will give you AIDS. Must be true?
One person's opinion doesn't make the truth.
Plus, the idea that Russia had to invade a country to stop NATO expansion, if that's what's being asserted, is so farcical because countries want to join NATO to avoid getting invaded; it's a rather comical reversal. NATO expansion would stop really quickly if Russia would cease wanting to conquer neighboring countries; saying that Russia has legitimate security concerns just means that someone believes all these sovereign nations bordering Russia are not actually sovereign and should be part of Russia, which is again just repeating Russian imperialism as being right because it's right.
Plus, Putin has been pretty explicit in his writings on Ukraine, as he pretends to be a historian. Putin just wants to eliminate Ukraine as a nation and force Ukrainians to be subservient to Russians, it's all there out in the open in his writings. Denying this is kind of like trying to argue that Mein Kampf wasn't Hitler's real thoughts, and that Germany had to invade Poland and then the USSR simply for their own security concerns.
But if you can recall the name of this academic, it will be pretty quick to refute the specific claims made by other authorities in the area.
That this even has to be defended says more about your mindset than any damnation of the person in question.
And as I've said already, I don't recall, nor do I think it's worth the time or the effort to figure it out, certainly not for you.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-rus...
This will get worse as grid equipment spares run out too.
This. Not only is it not mentioned in the article, it seems to be largely absent from the minds of planners, as the development and implementation of micro grids is mostly ad hoc and haphazard. But the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, as well as the increased likelihood of natural disasters (tornadoes, floods) should make the support of microgrids priority number one.
I assume the tardy adoption is because microgrids is still a fairly new technology, and not some nefarious plot by central governments to keep people dependent on their centralized systems. Right?
You still require supply chains for the complicated parts that cannot be easily replaced, mostly batteries and inverters. In a shortage situation, central grids will be under pressure to be fixed immediately, but your single set of wind turbines or solar panels might not be.
So the way I see it, microgrids would be maintained by cities and communities instead. The level of distribution would make it similar in action to the times of old coal power plants, one per city.
Instead of expensive missiles just use cracked from the factory EVs, smart ovens, boiler, p.v. inverters, ... to simply create peaks loads (both demand and demand drop) and you have crushed the enemy "smart" grid without much effort, physical damage and still having it functional if you want to invade.
Oh, did you see the crappiness level of EVs crapware? The push toward more and more IoT?
Just to say one recent https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/microsoft-boa-server-energ...
Perhaps not all countries will be as determined as the Ukrainians are in their constant repairs, but even with half of their generation capability destroyed, and so many substations targeted, the effects are much like rolling blackouts.
My son has Ukrainian language lessons with teachers both in Donetsk and Kyiv several times a week, and only a single lesson has been missed despite the constant destruction that is ongoing. I'm astounded both by the resilience of the grid and the resilience of Ukrainians. I hope that if such a situation ever happens to the US, we will prove to be as resourceful.
This piece also completely ignores the ongoing changes to our grid as it is being revolutionized by distributed energy resources and storage. Soon, islanding of homes, and the spread of more micro grids, means that a lot of the older reasoning in this article won't make much sense. Already, many critical infrastructure from hospitals to data centers plan for independence during outages. This will become increasingly common as the more electric vehicles allow for vehicle to home usage, as well as charging directly from home solar. This is what wealthy people do today, and costs are falling to make this accessible to all. There's even a chance that islanding might be cheaper than the alternatives for a significant chunk of homes in the future.
Already the grid costs us more than electricity generation, something like $0.08/kWh of the average electricity price of $0.13/kWh in the US. As generation from renewables gets cheaper, and storage gets cheaper, and the grid remains stubbornly expensive, more and more people will be looking to abandon it for energy independence on their own, or in smaller micro grids.