In Ukraine electric buggies have been used for frontline mobility because they're quiet, the wheeled military vehicles are in demand because combined with even a dirt road they're a lot faster getting around - i.e. one feature of the HIMARS is that it's not tracked.
Maybe you meant invest in nuclear weapons.
Nukes are useless in defense: the cannot be used anyway.
And yeah, maybe the defending countries leader isn’t willing to end it all, and maybe try collaboration or partisan resistance. But if you were the attacking country, would you be willing to make that bet? Or would you hesitate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulda_Gap
In reality this escalates very fast into all out nuclear war. Which is why you don't see wars between two nuclear armed countries. There is no winner in a nuclear war.
Both countries invested in nukes (it is claimed). Only Iran didn't get there in time, before the US stepped in to stop them (it is claimed). So unless the US lets you, it's probably a bad idea to invest in nukes, no? Or is your point that the US's nuke story was a lie, and that Iran actually should have invested in nukes?
> Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV
Have you done any calculations as to whether this would actually work? My gut feeling is that even if you put solar panels on literally every structure, you'd be far off from managing to power every vehicle. See if I get around to calculating later, but I at least advise you to do so yourself before making this argument.
> EVs are batteries on wheels! They can go charge and come back
Uh... Cars are fuel tanks on wheels...
The lesson all countries will take from Ukraine, Iran, and North Korea is: develop nuclear weapons.
Ukraine and Iran both don’t have nuclear weapons and they were both attacked by countries that do. North Korea does have them and they are apparently in no danger of being attacked.
North Korea was never in danger of being attacked anyway. They don’t need nuclear weapons to flatten Seoul. The only country capable of invading NK is China, and they benefit much more from NK remaining buffer zone.
This also applies to WMDs in general.
First, do the math for millions of acres of Ethanol, a small fraction of fuel additive.
Using the same acres for solar with be sufficient for the entire energy (all forms of energy) many times over.
So, now you do the math how many trucks and how much area for solar panels a typical military has.
I don't need to do any calculations for combustion engines: IT'S WHAT THE MILITARY IS USING RIGHT NOW TODAY!
Annual Electricity Generated is 26,300 TWh/year.
Over 6× total U.S. annual electricity consumption (~4,100 TWh/year). This is enough to electrify everything in US.
The ethanol argument is a dying cause.
The argument about corn is to actually stop the waste of the fertile land for fuel. Solar panels can be installed wherever they're necessary, no one is proposing replacing the corn in situ.
The math the person you're replying to was talking about was solar power vs ethanol. While your 800 m^2 sounds like a lot of land area for enough solar panels to fully charge a large electric truck, it's basically nothing compared to how much land area you'd need to grown enough corn to produce enough ethanol to power a similar truck. It's about 500 times as much land area, a fairly obvious result when you consider you get solar power from the land basically every day and corn once a year. Growing plants for ethanol is dumb.
Of course the benefit of a combustion engine is that you don't need to grow corn to make ethanol for it, at least as long as you can get fossil fuels out of the ground and the enemy doesn't disrupt your supply chain for drilling and refining fuel oil. But that's irrelevant since that wasn't the land-use comparison the parent poster was making.
10kwh x 100 x 24 = 24,000kwh Solar panels nominaly produce 1000kwh/m so 24,000m2 of panels... if facing the sun perfectly during normal day/night cycles. But non-equator latitudes need far more land than that because the sun isnt directly overhead, plus winter/rainy days... it is a massive solar farm (and a massive battery) just to replace an average highway gas station.
Given that any future 2-lane highway might see a couple thousand thousand EVs each hour, each needing charging every couple hundred miles, the number and size of solar charging stations per mile is crazy.
You need to go to a gas station BECAUSE there is no supply of gasoline straight to home. Homes have electricity. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, South Sudan, Yemen, remotest village in India. I don't know where you live, but if your home doesn't have electricity, your country has bigger problems to deal with than buying Teslas and DC Fast Chargers.
Car chargers are high power.
For example https://electricbrighton.com/news/considerations-for-lamp-po... says charging times are 18 hours, which is hardly overnight.
Plus you couldn't do it anywhere where thieves steal copper. Car charging cables would quickly become a theft target.
Most people drive 20 - 40 miles/day, hardly 10% of the battery. You will be fine.
You could also charge at work. They should have more than lamp posts.
> Plus you couldn't do it anywhere where thieves steal copper. Car charging cables would quickly become a theft target.
Are you from the past? This simply doesn't happen. The reality is millions of people drive electric cars, and while there are some issues - mainly around the minority who don't have their own driveway, and the tiny numbers who drive over 70,000km year, it simply works.
People certainly steal diesel though.
Exactly the point of the article: that power is many times what a streetlamp uses or can provide.
Your charging likely wouldn't work from a streetlamp.
> Are you from the past?
No need to be snarky. Read guidelines.
I had two brass taps stolen from outside my house and the thieves left the main water line in broken. Worth nothing - maybe it was kids? The plumber cost me plenty to fix it. The inconvenience cost me more. In another suburb I had my spare tire stolen: for the aluminium rim.
I was thinking of catalytic converter thefts: an industry of theft that was constructed around valuable untraceable metals. Fortunately I haven't seen that in my neighborhood.
I ran into that problem during covid. I had to do a few work-related 1000-mile drives and they had closed most all the restrooms!
And my home is also home to a few hundred other people. Installing enough chargers for all our cars would require a massive grid upgrade that our city would never support. Not everyone lives in a suburb.
And what you say about apartments is wrong, it’s definitely not impossible. I’ve heard of plenty of apartment blocks installing chargers, they have load management systems to manage the load and believe it or not, not every single apartment occupant will need to charge their car every day at exactly the same time as everyone else!
Do you not have an ovens? Or electric shower? Mine use 7kW, same as the car charger.
Travers Solar in Alberta generates about 2.5TWh a year from under 14 sqkm.
Build 30 of them and that's 400 sqkm.
A 20sqkm by 20sqkm solar plant would power every car and light van in Canada forever (setting aside seasonality).
Factor in lower generation in December, you'd need 10 times that amount of solar, about 70km by 70km, 5000 square km.
That's less than 1 quarter of 1 percent of the land in Alberta alone.
(Of course you wouldn't put it in one location, it would be spread out across the country)
Funnily enough 5000 square km is about the total land use of Canada's oil land use (surface use)
You'd have a lot of excess power in the summer -- you'd be generating 650TWh of excess power a year
Please also consider land for biofuel/biodiesel.
1 in 3 acres of Canadian canola (amounting to roughly 7 million acres of farmland) goes directly into producing feedstock for the global and domestic biofuel markets. https://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/daily/conservatives-diesel-...
For 7 million acres (Canadian acres - 16% Capacity Factor)
Annual Electricity Generation (16% CF): ~4,467 Terawatt-hours (TWh/year)
National Scale Comparison:~7.4× Canada's total annual electricity consumption (~600 TWh/year)
Or, convert the solar energy to heat, then back to electricity at 40% round trip efficiency. Needs only 2.5x the solar (or less, because some solar goes directly to the users without long term storage). The heat is very storable at scale, even for seasonal storage.
If you are planning infrastructure like highways, national averages are irrelevant. It is the same debate that Hertz had when it dropped teslas: charging infrastructure is local and rental car locations (airports) cannot support the needed power density.
28% of trips are under a mile, 52% under three, 64% under five, 79% under ten, 93% under twenty-five, and 98% under 50 miles.
Only 0.8% of the trips are over 100 miles!
> Lol, 11,000 is for all the city-bound teslas that only drive from suburb to the office.
Most countries have electricity at home and at office. They can charge at both locations. If you are still using kerosene lamps and haven't started using electricity at home, you have bigger problems than charging infrastructure.
23.5 million light-duty vehicles
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241021/dq241...
If each one were to drive 25,000 km (way higher than the NJC assume on https://www.njc-cnm.gc.ca/s3/d896/en, way higher than the insurance complanies say is the average - https://affiliatedinsurance.ca/blogs/how-average-mileage-per...)
It would require electricity to provide for 587500 million km of driving each year, that's about 118,000 million kWh, or 118 TWh.
Your statement
> 10kwh x 100 x 24 = 24,000kwh Solar panels
Is tricky to understand what you are on abbout as it's not clear what on earth you mean by this as solar panels aren't measured in kWh. kWh per year perhaps.
You are talking about delivering power to a specific location, not generating power. This is an argument from a decade ago, reality has proven that isn't a problem.
For what its worth, I drive over 30,000 km a year and very rarely use a public charger.
Sure, but you don't have inexhaustible source of crude oil and a refinery in your backyard!
But Sun reliably shows up most days. It doesn't ghost. Sunlight can't be sanctioned, tariffed, taxed, embargoed, pirated, nuked, rebuked, rebuffed, offended. Sunlight is also compatible with most religious beliefs (god is light, etc).
cries
Funny thing is, fuel can be transported, so that's not needed!
If you want to look at the geopolitics of it, all of the bigger countries do in fact have their own sources of oil and their own refineries.
And if you're going the solar route, you still need the raw materials to build the solar panels (and batteries, and EVs) in the first place. They don't grow on trees.
I'm sure we'll see a transition to electric some day, it is more efficient purely from a physics standpoint. But I'd be shocked to see the military transition before civilian industry.
I don't think the main focus is on converting military operations themselves to work without fossil fuels, but more that if you can convert your civilian industry then you have a much better overall strategic position because your total demand for fossil fuels is much lower. (Strategy is a lot more than just your military)
Solar panels have 25 year warranty. Can you think of anything that you have bought or can buy with a 25 year warranty?
At the end of 25 years, they will produce 92%. Perfectly acceptable for a few more decades. The latest panels produce 740 - 800W+/panel, this is sufficient for a lifetime without ever having to think of upgrades.
That won't help you if you can't refine it. Russia has more oil than most and has/had lots of refineries. Ukraine has taken out so many of them that Trump is complaining it's affecting the price of diesel (even though the US also has lots of oil and lots of refineries).
Oil infrastructure is temporary, expensive and fragile whereas panels work for 30 years.
The problem is net usage. The UK has oil fields and it owns refineries, but it uses a lot more fuel than could be extracted and processed with these operations even if somehow Capitalism was dead and the State seized control of everything for domestic use rather than corporate profit.
The energy balance data I've looked at doesn't go back more than this century so maybe in the 1980s or something it would have been theoretically possible, but it isn't today and hasn't been for decades.
You still need raw materials to build oil tanks and pipelines and fuel trucks. They don't grow on trees.
Gonna need a citation on that, where I live in the Midwest there are legitimately times where I haven't seen the sun for 2 straight weeks. Not to mention some latitudes I've lived at where the sun doesn't get up till like 9 and is already almost gone by 4.
Like AZ, CA, Texas sure go nuts solarizing. But there are plenty of people for whom that's not really an option.
Solar panels work even if its cloudy: Power generation typically drops to 10% to 25% of normal capacity under heavy, grey overcast skies, but can reach 40% to 60% (or higher) under thin or partly cloudy skies.
> Have you done any calculations as to whether this would actually work?
Yes. All cars and vans in the UK drive a total of 320 billion miles a year. My own electric car tells me this would require 80 billion kWh. 1kWp produces 1000 kWh a year, so you need 80 million kWp or 80 TWh a year.
My house will easily provide 8kWp, meaning you'd need 10 million houses. There's 30 million homes, and that's before you factor in non-domestic buildings.
A single shooting estate in the uk could produce 20TWh a year with solar alone. Throw in wind and that would petty much double.
Cars and vans use 16.5 billion litres of diesel and 15.5 billion litres of petrol
HGVs and busses use 8 billion litres of diesel, about 20% of the total of cars and vans. Agriculture adds another 1.5b and trains half a billion, so call it 10 billion litres, 30% of total fuel use by cars and vans. Push it 50% up from 80TWh to 120TWh if you want and require 15 million roofs
Of course the most economic way to deliver solar isn't by putting it on the roof
EVs go 2-5 miles per kWh.
So, the charge rate is 20-500 miles per hour when the sun is out.
Assume one extra EV per house, round robin. New EVs are $10-60K, depending on county. The solar is, say, $30K.
So, $60-210K per house for ten years of energy independence for a two car ICE house. ICE cars wear out faster than EVs. You can figure gas, grid and inflated maintenance on the ICE route yourself, but the math works.
Of course, used EVs more than halve my estimates,
Gonna need a citation on that, given that the average EV battery lifetime is 10-20 years.
Weapons yes, power seems quite stupid given the costs and lead times.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/462168/nuclear-reactors-...
France really decimated it's nuclear industry, it takes lot of money and time to restore back capabilities (heavy forging, nuclear grade quality construction) and train people.
Let's not forget that in 2015, French president Hollande promised to slash nuclear's contribution of power generation by 2025.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/renewables-up-nuclear-down-in-fren...
It was really only 2022 Russian invasion, that showed that slowly replacing nuclear power with imported gas was a bad strategy. (This error is still not acknowledged in Germany)
And this still assumes that rebuilding a nuclear industry somehow is an end in itself. It isn't.
The objective is to decarbonize society. Not construt nuclear reactors. We don't have any special obligation to build new nuclear, anymore more than there was an obligation to keep building oil-fired power plants once they stopped making economic sense.
Coal generation was taxed out by EU Emissions Trading System, physical costs of mining lignite in Germany and operating coal power plants are the same as 20 years ago. (and the health impacts are still very negative)
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-regulator-says-n...
> nuclear disappeared
Nuclear in Germany disappeared not for economic reasons, but for political reasons.
" Following a wide public debate, the Atomic Energy Act was amended accordingly on April 22, 2002. The aim was to phase out nuclear energy for the commercial generation of electricity in an orderly manner. To this end, each nuclear power plant was assigned a residual electricity volume such that the total output of the respective plant corresponded to an average 32-year lifetime. The construction of new nuclear power plants was banned altogether. "
https://www.base.bund.de/en/nuclear-safety/nuclear-phase-out...
The objective in Germany changes over time, in the 2000s it was removing nuclear power from electric grid, without much consideration for CO2 emissions. ( Construction of the last new coal power plant in Germany, Datteln 4, began in November 2007. Entered commercial operation on May 30, 2020)
https://www.powermag.com/germany-brings-last-new-coal-plant-...
Now in 2026, it's slowly removing fossil fuels from electric grid and the whole industry. I say slowly, because state subsidies are already allocated for construction of new gas power plants in Germany.
" Germany will initially hold two sets of auctions for new backup power plants with a combined capacity of 11 gigawatts (GW). Of these, the first tenders (8 September and at the end of December 2026), covering 9 GW, are aimed at so-called "long-term capacity", which is capable of supplying electricity continuously over an extended period, ensuring that even prolonged periods without sufficient renewable energy generation can be covered. It is likely that only gas-fired power plants will be successful in these auctions. Successful bidders receive remuneration for having electricity available once a facility is built, providing the financial incentive needed to invest in the first place. "
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-passes-law-subs...
The answer twenty years ago is not the same as the one today.
What’s the relevance?
The biggest issue is only hinted in the article:
> ‘There’s just enough sun [in January/this winter thus far] to make it work,’ says Olena Kondratiuk
Solar+batteries work well in summer months, but for winter months, solar has much lower output. This is why Russia is attacking thermal plants especially in winter.
Have the hyperscalers fund them, they have an unlimited source of money for AI DCs. Nuclear should be significantly cheaper than space DCs.
The DPRKs primary goal is preservation of the Kim regime above all else. That’s why the DPRK over the last 70+ years has focused on Juche, a principle of self-reliance. The vast majority of their weapon systems are of indigenous designs and manufacture. And why they have developed and deployed an independent nuclear deterrent.
China is a bit closer to DPRK though and shares a land border so its a but easier for them to assist.
> Node level failures (hail on roof breaks solar) can be easily overcome.
If you are talking about "just change the panel if it breaks" scenario, it's unreliable. A big Ukrainian city near the border with Russia ran out of glass to change shattered windows at some point with logistics working well, and glass is easier to source than solar panels.
> Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV. This will be the most resilient, distributed grid
Resilience is questionable because solar panels can't be either quickly moved or armored (direct sunlight required). Damaging a lot of panels at once won't require a lot of explosives either, just a lot of projectiles (and maybe some bonus paint/chemicals to render panels useless), so the drones to do that will be cheap. If the cells inside a panel are wired sequentially (which is often the case), only a little bit should be damaged to break the whole panel.
Solar panels alone won't generate enough to power EVs and residential buildings. Modern buildings have multiple floors, but can only install their footprint (and maybe one side of building) worth of panels.
Seasonal sunlight changes make them less useful outside of summer. I know that batteries exist, but there's only so much power that can be generated over 8-10 hours from October to February — months when the power demand gets higher and EV efficiency gets lower.
> The idea of energy as packets, which can be Store-and-Forward (using batteries) will change everything we know about energy.
Sounds cool, but would it really change everything? Storing solar power (or from other sources) for later is indeed good, but it isn't that groundbreaking of a concept. It also requires additional costs to set up and maintain (and with big distributed network it will be either maintained at a big cost or neglected). Charging the batteries, storing and forwarding energy introduces energy losses at every step as well.
And it takes quite a bit to knock out a solar panel, they're designed to resist hail and storm damage (and careless shipping/installers) and will continue to function with reduced efficiency in the presence of quite a bit of damage, you'd need to systematically demolish every single panel in an entire city to take it offline.
https://github.com/Lkruitwagen/global-fossil-fuel-supply-cha...: The resulting complex network has 6.09mn nodes and 15.70mn edges and is implemented in a graph database. With estimates of annual coal, gas, and oil demand in 13,229 global population centres and 8,165 global power stations, we use a minimum-cost flow method to estimate global asset-level energy flows.
If you want to protect your country, here are your options:
1) Invest in nuclear power and nukes (source of Uranium may be a concern). See North Korea vs Iran.
2) Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV. This will be the most resilient, distributed grid that can never be disrupted. Node level failures (hail on roof breaks solar) can be easily overcome. EVs are batteries on wheels! They can go charge and come back. Some on this forum may be familiar with Cattle vs Pet, Redundancy, Resiliency, Virtualization (--> Virtual Power Plants), etc -- same concepts, but applied to power generation which is designed as a monolithic circuit switched network. The idea of energy as packets, which can be Store-and-Forward (using batteries) will change everything we know about energy.