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I'm curious about this from a security perspective. With oil, coal, and natural gas, a cut in the supply network doesn't necessarily have an immediate impact.

I'm curious about this from a security perspective. With oil, coal, and natural gas, a cut in the supply network doesn't necessarily have an immediate impact. Buffers exist in some parts of the distribution network: ships holds, rail cars, and storage tanks. With electricity, it doesn't seem like we have much infrastructure for buffering the supply. So cutting those cables might have an immediate and significant impact on the consumers. Perhaps this creates a disincentive for any of these powers starting a war. But it also seems like an extra attack surface for terrorism, extortion, or natural disasters.

sudhirj 5y ago
For one, the power cables seem to be thicker and better shielded than the fiber optic ones. That aside, I don’t think any economy will rely purely on imported power - backups in the form of natural gas plants or grid scale storage will likely need to form part of the mix - there’s already the chance of some cloudy or rainy days over the solar farms, so it’s unlikely there isn’t a contingency.
- _Microft 5y ago
  There was a study recently that used historic weather, solar irradiance data and energy use data and worked out that a certain mix of (over-provisioned) solar, wind and 3 hours of storage would have sufficed to provide energy during almost all hours of the studied decades. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
  - jdmichal 5y ago
    I'm not sure where you're getting that "almost all hours" from? Here's the relevant figure, which seems to indicate hundreds to thousands of hours under your given scenario: Please note the logarithmic scale on the hours! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z/figures/4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z/figures/4 (Note the green lines are 1.5x generation, with three lines at different saturations for 0 hours, 3 hours, or 12 hours of storage.)
    - _Microft 5y ago
      Thanks, I'll have another look!
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  What you say makes sense to me. OTOH, I get the impression that some of our infrastructure has a financial incentive to eliminate any reserve capacity. E.g., that snowstorm in Texas last(?) winter. So I'm curious if having any non-trivial amount of electricity supplied by a usually-reliable mechanism becomes a long-term risk.
  - sudhirj 5y ago
    There's actually some automatic de-risking with renewables because of their semi-unpredictable nature. If you have a coal, gas or nuclear plant that runs reliably, some executive will get a bonus if they cut costs by shutting off all the redundancies. If you cost-cut redundancies with renewables, though, you'll hit a cloudy or non-windy day before bonus time comes around, and then you'll have a new executive who gets a bonus if they have reasonable redundancies. So there's some resiliency that comes from intermittent renewables, like having a chaos monkey always running on the grid.
- onecommentman 5y ago
  They would need to be thicker and better shielded. Sharks might very well be attracted to any EM generated and attempt to bite the cables. https://www.oafrica.com/broadband/sharks/ https://www.oafrica.com/broadband/sharks/ Still sounds fairly fragile, but no more vulnerable I suppose than undersea fiber optic cables. But there is no alternative routing or satellite backup in this power transmission case.
dirtyid 5y ago
Pretty much, destroying pipelines on sovereign soil vs destroying infra in international waters are different risk exposures. Especially one that crosses multiple jurisdictions.
aaron695 5y ago
It allows energy independence for a time of war and trouble, since you can install complex locally producing projects relying on a global grid to smooth them out. Then at war, your local supply will have it's normal ups and downs, but you'll be self sufficient. > Perhaps this creates a disincentive for any of these powers starting a war. Or... we can just stick with Golden Arches theory and not move that to critical infrastructure.
elihu 5y ago
I think that any country using links like this ought to have emergency backup power systems. I think this is actually a reasonable use of coal and/or natural gas: keep the infrastructure maintained and have it ready to take over if there's an emergency, but otherwise it sits idle. In most cases you wouldn't even have to build new plants, you'd just keep the old ones around that were displaced by renewables. (Though over time you may need to build additional plants as electric usage grows.) Ideally you'd have some sort of international agreement that any fossil fuels used would be subject to a high carbon tax, so there'd be less temptation to just declare an emergency for no reason. But that would require more international cooperation on climate than what we've seen so far.

sudhirj 5y ago

For one, the power cables seem to be thicker and better shielded than the fiber optic ones. That aside, I don’t think any economy will rely purely on imported power - backups in the form of natural gas plants or grid scale storage will likely need to form part of the mix - there’s already the chance of some cloudy or rainy days over the solar farms, so it’s unlikely there isn’t a contingency.

_Microft 5y ago
There was a study recently that used historic weather, solar irradiance data and energy use data and worked out that a certain mix of (over-provisioned) solar, wind and 3 hours of storage would have sufficed to provide energy during almost all hours of the studied decades. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
- jdmichal 5y ago
  I'm not sure where you're getting that "almost all hours" from? Here's the relevant figure, which seems to indicate hundreds to thousands of hours under your given scenario: Please note the logarithmic scale on the hours! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z/figures/4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z/figures/4 (Note the green lines are 1.5x generation, with three lines at different saturations for 0 hours, 3 hours, or 12 hours of storage.)
  - _Microft 5y ago
    Thanks, I'll have another look!
CoastalCoder 5y ago
What you say makes sense to me. OTOH, I get the impression that some of our infrastructure has a financial incentive to eliminate any reserve capacity. E.g., that snowstorm in Texas last(?) winter. So I'm curious if having any non-trivial amount of electricity supplied by a usually-reliable mechanism becomes a long-term risk.
- sudhirj 5y ago
  There's actually some automatic de-risking with renewables because of their semi-unpredictable nature. If you have a coal, gas or nuclear plant that runs reliably, some executive will get a bonus if they cut costs by shutting off all the redundancies. If you cost-cut redundancies with renewables, though, you'll hit a cloudy or non-windy day before bonus time comes around, and then you'll have a new executive who gets a bonus if they have reasonable redundancies. So there's some resiliency that comes from intermittent renewables, like having a chaos monkey always running on the grid.
onecommentman 5y ago
They would need to be thicker and better shielded. Sharks might very well be attracted to any EM generated and attempt to bite the cables. https://www.oafrica.com/broadband/sharks/ https://www.oafrica.com/broadband/sharks/ Still sounds fairly fragile, but no more vulnerable I suppose than undersea fiber optic cables. But there is no alternative routing or satellite backup in this power transmission case.

dirtyid 5y ago

Pretty much, destroying pipelines on sovereign soil vs destroying infra in international waters are different risk exposures. Especially one that crosses multiple jurisdictions.

aaron695 5y ago

It allows energy independence for a time of war and trouble, since you can install complex locally producing projects relying on a global grid to smooth them out. Then at war, your local supply will have it's normal ups and downs, but you'll be self sufficient. > Perhaps this creates a disincentive for any of these powers starting a war. Or... we can just stick with Golden Arches theory and not move that to critical infrastructure.

elihu 5y ago

I think that any country using links like this ought to have emergency backup power systems. I think this is actually a reasonable use of coal and/or natural gas: keep the infrastructure maintained and have it ready to take over if there's an emergency, but otherwise it sits idle. In most cases you wouldn't even have to build new plants, you'd just keep the old ones around that were displaced by renewables. (Though over time you may need to build additional plants as electric usage grows.) Ideally you'd have some sort of international agreement that any fossil fuels used would be subject to a high carbon tax, so there'd be less temptation to just declare an emergency for no reason. But that would require more international cooperation on climate than what we've seen so far.