I'd be worried about the inverters in large commercial solar plants. On a sunny day you could easily cause a blackout by turning enough solar capacity off at once. Maybe shut down the entire grid when the sudden power imbalances trip the self- protection in half the grid. That's a pain to recover from. Spain went through that not too long ago

But maybe rapidly switching residential solar on and off in a coordinated way can also do funny things to grid equipment

Any idea what happens to the grid when a significant chunk of solar power suddenly disconnects?

There are always some “stable” power sources kept on standby that can be activated within minutes, for example gas turbines. In European electricity markets, generators can actually be paid simply for keeping this reserve capacity available, even if they are not producing much electricity most of the time.

The problem is that a few minutes is still too slow when a large power source suddenly drops out. The grid needs an immediate response, which can come from fast reserves such as batteries, hydro, pumped storage and other generators that can react automatically.

Pumped storage is basically gravitational energy storage: you pump water uphill when electricity is plentiful, then release it through turbines when power is needed.

I quite fancy electrical grid.

Not much if a couple of thousand homes in US switches off. There are way more sensitive targets than ”they could randomly hike the electricity usage with 0,0000000000000000001%”

DDoS, anonymizer proxy, and turn off power in large commercial installations. They kinda deserve it for investing in solar. US holds all the power in social media, can't blame China if they want to utilize their lead in solar for something too.

Hopefully mutually assured annoyance keeps everyone at bay.

To set roofs on fire?

In the end it's all about trust. Right now I don't see why China would like to burn down their market.

guys, do we need to reinvent the same Hanlon razor but for capitalism: Dont attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by capitalism?

If we're reinventing sayings, I suggest Clarke's third law first: Any sufficiently advanced capitalism is indistinguishable from malice.

Some of those are networked I think?

Most of them are. Including the biggest ones.

Track usage patterns to know when people are at home and then rob them.

The HN version of "I have nothing to hide."

The nothing to hide thing isnt even an HN only thing unfortunately.

nah, the ones connected to the grid... you turn them all off during peak sun hours at the exact same time

same issue with large loads like boilers, this stuff should never be connected to the internet, but it is

if you can control enough load on the grid you can do real damage

To piss away decades of hard-earned trust in its products for some short-term one-time political 'pwn' of the enemy.

If that goal sounds stupid to you, that's because it is. I would expect some countries that are not China to act with such a capricious lack of foresight.

The US pulled a 1-time trigger on Japan… twice. Looks like it worked out. You should be careful tossing around words like stupid.

Worked out how?

They've made no meaningful concessions, and are quietly dumping treasuries. US bond yields are skyrocketing, making it more and more expensive for the US to borrow... Under a president that's pissing away taxpayer money like a drunken sailor.

This isn't some 3D chess move, it's exactly what it looks like.

I think synchronized operations could really disrupt the grid — think thousands of inverters switching backfeeding to the grid on/off, causing waves and disruption. Or thousands of inverters having their grid sync disabled, simultaneously operating to shift the frequency of the grid (very bad).

If you had enough systems under control in an area, you could probably create a brown out or some other type of scenario by turning off 1000 houses.

What do you think will happen if ALL the inverters in a city during a sunny day will suddenly switch off, then on, then off, then on, then off....

Also, you're sure its only home energy generation that's affected?