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I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it

I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. 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.

radu_floricica 4y ago
All good points. A small note: there's yet a many orders of magnitude difference between the whole power consumption, or even only residential power consumption, and the storage available in distributed sources. Even projecting ahead a few years and counting what's likely to be built. I'd guess between 3 and 5 zeroes, in most densely populated cities. 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.
- jes5199 4y ago
  The densely populated cities are going to be the hardest to transition - but in rural and suburban areas it may already be cheaper to generate and store your own power than to get it from the grid, most of the year
  - paganel 4y ago
    You need capital to be able to generate "your own power", the same goes for storing it. Most of the people from the rural parts of Eastern Europe don't have access to that capital and most probably will never have, for the simple reason that they are (relatively) quite poor.
    - snowpid 4y ago
      I doubt it. I suspect they're thinking of bank loans, but resourceful fintech already have solutions for getting by without a loan. I see similar business models in Africa, so poverty is not an argument against it.
      - Melting_Harps 4y ago
        > I doubt it. I suspect they're thinking of bank loans, but resourceful fintech already have solutions for getting by without a loan. I see similar business models in Africa, so poverty is not an argument against it. 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. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGWEQIrieY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGWEQIrieY
ammonammonammon 4y ago
Sincere question so please don't overreact as if I'm trolling. Why is your son learning Ukrainian! I could make a couple guesses but the subject is understandably too sensitive I'd like to just inform myself as to something I may be missing! I detest ignorance, above all especially my own.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Long digression away from energy here: My wife is Ukrainian, and we have two бабусі (grandmas) living with us now due to rockets making their Ukrainian home uninhabitable. So Ukrainian is actually the dominant language in my house, though I only know a tiny bit, since I grew up in the US. The lessons are speech therapy, not merely learning the language as itself. But the therapy immediately transfers from Ukrainian to English. When he figured out pronouns in Ukrainian from the lessons, he immediately started using I/me/you correctly in English. His particular speech pathology allows for acquisition of many languages very quickly once he is taught the concepts (he's roughly equally strong in English, Ukrainian, and Russian now, and is quickly picking up the very small amount of Spanish I know).
  - captainkrtek 4y ago
    That’s fantastic that learning new languages works well for him as a form of speech therapy! Best wishes to your family as well during this time.
Joeri 4y ago
I have a friend whose mom lived in zaporozhya until 2 weeks ago, and the rolling blackouts were the reason she finally fled the city, despite months of explosions. The blackouts were getting more severe, and when you live on the 11th floor with no elevator, no water, no heating, no way to warm food, life is very difficult.
- troon-lover 4y ago
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  For sure it depends on the circumstances. Being on an 11th floor of an apartment building would be difficult. I wouldn't want to live there because although it is apparently still there, I'd be afraid it would be a massive target for artillary. 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?
throwaway742 4y ago
I have a friend who works for a major power company in the US. They told me there are severe supply chain issues that are making it difficult to order new replacement parts for electrical infrastructure. As critical infrastructure they do have stockpiles of replacement parts, but they are limited. I wonder how long Ukraine can sustain these repairs.
- baq 4y ago
  This is a topic that’s come up before, pre war. One can hope some of those help packages will be used to bring up grid equipment factories.
- paganel 4y ago
  One of the major issues with the Ukraine power infrastructure is that it was set up back in the day by the, well, Soviets, which means most of the equipment dates from Soviet times, which also means most of the repairs/replacement work can only be done by factories located in the former USSR. Most of those factories are now located in present-day Russia, which is where the major problem comes from. 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.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    For an example I looked into Poland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_St... 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.
vkou 4y ago
> I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. 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).
- epistasis 4y ago
  Agreed on your points with regard to waging war. 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.
  - hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
    I'm now imagining Putin talking like the Pakled captain. It's a tremendously amusing mental image.
snoopy_telex 4y ago
> I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. 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.
- epistasis 4y ago
  The Russian war is actually one of the least political things in the US right now, there is great bi-partisan support, and it's hard to imagine anything else that garners such broad support from all but the most fringe of fringe (the left-right red-brown alliance against Ukraine is so tiny that it can barely be found). 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 the Oroville dam failure, when there's a lot more solid retrospective data to look at.
  - snoopy_telex 4y ago
    My experience differs. The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine. It’s caused a lot of strife in my family. And I don’t think the right folks feel like they’re on the fringe. They do watch a lot of Fox, but they’re not Q folks, afaik at least.
    - dicriseg 4y ago
      If they strongly support Russia, I’ll suggest to you that they aren’t just right-leaning.
    - baq 4y ago
      I honestly can’t comprehend how it is possible to support Russia in the US after the Cold War and Putin. I literally have a blank space in my mind when thinking about that.
brnt 4y ago
Perhaps worthy to note that the timing of the invasion coincided with an EU-Ukraine test of syncing up their power networks. A wholesale switch of Ukraine away from synchronisation with Russia and permanent synchronisation with the EU was planned later in 2022. Interrupting this switch, and the Ukrainian resilience against Russian manipulation through power was likely a reason to start the war when it started.
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  IIRC Ukraine synchronized with EU earlier because of the invasion, sometime in march I believe.
  - brnt 4y ago
    I believe so too [1]. Of course, Russia and many others believed that by mid march, the war would be over and that the change would not have completed. I'm relieved that those initial expectations collided with Ukrainian resilience. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-russia/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-rus...
f137 4y ago
Your Kyiv teacher is lucky. Blackouts vary a lot between regions and even within a single town. We have a distributed team and track blackouts in daytime, 8am-8pm. A couple of people had no blackouts so far whatsoever, a few had about 40 hours off out of 60 last workweek. The median is somewhere between 25-30. It is getting worse gradually.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Indeed, the class was cancelled this morning despite the valiant efforts of the teacher to find the combo of a connection plus electricity. This will get worse as grid equipment spares run out too.
hef19898 4y ago
Despite real world examples constantly showing the opposite, from civil wars, famine, large scale disaster and all-out war, people still believe that somehow 3 weeks in the world turns into The Walking Dead or something. Not gonna happen, society in the 14th century survived the plague.
- t-3 4y ago
  It's the effect of persistent long-term propaganda. No government ever will ever admit that society could survive without effective government.
dncornholio 4y ago
If Covid has learned me anything, it's that people are not resilient at all and love to give it blame for their own problems. It worried me how many people thinks Covid has had a permanent impact on their lives. It's negligible imo..
stareatgoats 4y ago
> 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 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?
- cudgy 4y ago
  Unfortunately, the massive influence of central grid profiteers make the obviously beneficial (especially in times of disaster and war) move to micro grids progress at the slowest possible pace.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    The thing about microgrids is that maintenance falls onto the owner. You still require specialized knowledge and perhaps team of people who can handle it to maintain the microgrid and repair it. 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.
kkfx 4y ago
I suggest a far simpler technique in the modern society: just use a long list of crapware vulnerabilities. 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?
- epistasis 4y ago
  Ukraine's electrical grid has been under severe cyber attack for years by Russia. I suspect their defenses have come pretty hardened, and Ukrainians are no slouch when it comes to software.
  - kkfx 4y ago
    Ukraine electrical grid is Soviet one, so hardly crackable from remote being essentially purely electromechanical. Westerns grids on contrary... Just to say one recent https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/microsoft-boa-server-energy-grids/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/microsoft-boa-server-energ...

radu_floricica 4y ago

All good points. A small note: there's yet a many orders of magnitude difference between the whole power consumption, or even only residential power consumption, and the storage available in distributed sources. Even projecting ahead a few years and counting what's likely to be built. I'd guess between 3 and 5 zeroes, in most densely populated cities. 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.

jes5199 4y ago
The densely populated cities are going to be the hardest to transition - but in rural and suburban areas it may already be cheaper to generate and store your own power than to get it from the grid, most of the year
- paganel 4y ago
  You need capital to be able to generate "your own power", the same goes for storing it. Most of the people from the rural parts of Eastern Europe don't have access to that capital and most probably will never have, for the simple reason that they are (relatively) quite poor.
  - snowpid 4y ago
    I doubt it. I suspect they're thinking of bank loans, but resourceful fintech already have solutions for getting by without a loan. I see similar business models in Africa, so poverty is not an argument against it.
    - Melting_Harps 4y ago
      > I doubt it. I suspect they're thinking of bank loans, but resourceful fintech already have solutions for getting by without a loan. I see similar business models in Africa, so poverty is not an argument against it. 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. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGWEQIrieY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGWEQIrieY

ammonammonammon 4y ago

Sincere question so please don't overreact as if I'm trolling. Why is your son learning Ukrainian! I could make a couple guesses but the subject is understandably too sensitive I'd like to just inform myself as to something I may be missing! I detest ignorance, above all especially my own.

epistasis 4y ago
Long digression away from energy here: My wife is Ukrainian, and we have two бабусі (grandmas) living with us now due to rockets making their Ukrainian home uninhabitable. So Ukrainian is actually the dominant language in my house, though I only know a tiny bit, since I grew up in the US. The lessons are speech therapy, not merely learning the language as itself. But the therapy immediately transfers from Ukrainian to English. When he figured out pronouns in Ukrainian from the lessons, he immediately started using I/me/you correctly in English. His particular speech pathology allows for acquisition of many languages very quickly once he is taught the concepts (he's roughly equally strong in English, Ukrainian, and Russian now, and is quickly picking up the very small amount of Spanish I know).
- captainkrtek 4y ago
  That’s fantastic that learning new languages works well for him as a form of speech therapy! Best wishes to your family as well during this time.

Joeri 4y ago

I have a friend whose mom lived in zaporozhya until 2 weeks ago, and the rolling blackouts were the reason she finally fled the city, despite months of explosions. The blackouts were getting more severe, and when you live on the 11th floor with no elevator, no water, no heating, no way to warm food, life is very difficult.

troon-lover 4y ago
FrontierPsych 4y ago
For sure it depends on the circumstances. Being on an 11th floor of an apartment building would be difficult. I wouldn't want to live there because although it is apparently still there, I'd be afraid it would be a massive target for artillary. 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?

throwaway742 4y ago

I have a friend who works for a major power company in the US. They told me there are severe supply chain issues that are making it difficult to order new replacement parts for electrical infrastructure. As critical infrastructure they do have stockpiles of replacement parts, but they are limited. I wonder how long Ukraine can sustain these repairs.

baq 4y ago
This is a topic that’s come up before, pre war. One can hope some of those help packages will be used to bring up grid equipment factories.
paganel 4y ago
One of the major issues with the Ukraine power infrastructure is that it was set up back in the day by the, well, Soviets, which means most of the equipment dates from Soviet times, which also means most of the repairs/replacement work can only be done by factories located in the former USSR. Most of those factories are now located in present-day Russia, which is where the major problem comes from. 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.
- Sakos 4y ago
  For an example I looked into Poland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_Station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be%C5%82chat%C3%B3w_Power_St... 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.

vkou 4y ago

> I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. 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).

epistasis 4y ago
Agreed on your points with regard to waging war. 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.
- hn_go_brrrrr 4y ago
  I'm now imagining Putin talking like the Pakled captain. It's a tremendously amusing mental image.

snoopy_telex 4y ago

> I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. 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.

epistasis 4y ago
The Russian war is actually one of the least political things in the US right now, there is great bi-partisan support, and it's hard to imagine anything else that garners such broad support from all but the most fringe of fringe (the left-right red-brown alliance against Ukraine is so tiny that it can barely be found). 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 the Oroville dam failure, when there's a lot more solid retrospective data to look at.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  My experience differs. The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine. It’s caused a lot of strife in my family. And I don’t think the right folks feel like they’re on the fringe. They do watch a lot of Fox, but they’re not Q folks, afaik at least.
  - dicriseg 4y ago
    If they strongly support Russia, I’ll suggest to you that they aren’t just right-leaning.
  - baq 4y ago
    I honestly can’t comprehend how it is possible to support Russia in the US after the Cold War and Putin. I literally have a blank space in my mind when thinking about that.

brnt 4y ago

Perhaps worthy to note that the timing of the invasion coincided with an EU-Ukraine test of syncing up their power networks. A wholesale switch of Ukraine away from synchronisation with Russia and permanent synchronisation with the EU was planned later in 2022. Interrupting this switch, and the Ukrainian resilience against Russian manipulation through power was likely a reason to start the war when it started.

Kbelicius 4y ago
IIRC Ukraine synchronized with EU earlier because of the invasion, sometime in march I believe.
- brnt 4y ago
  I believe so too [1]. Of course, Russia and many others believed that by mid march, the war would be over and that the change would not have completed. I'm relieved that those initial expectations collided with Ukrainian resilience. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-russia/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-european-power-grid-rus...

f137 4y ago

Your Kyiv teacher is lucky. Blackouts vary a lot between regions and even within a single town. We have a distributed team and track blackouts in daytime, 8am-8pm. A couple of people had no blackouts so far whatsoever, a few had about 40 hours off out of 60 last workweek. The median is somewhere between 25-30. It is getting worse gradually.

epistasis 4y ago
Indeed, the class was cancelled this morning despite the valiant efforts of the teacher to find the combo of a connection plus electricity. This will get worse as grid equipment spares run out too.

hef19898 4y ago

Despite real world examples constantly showing the opposite, from civil wars, famine, large scale disaster and all-out war, people still believe that somehow 3 weeks in the world turns into The Walking Dead or something. Not gonna happen, society in the 14th century survived the plague.

t-3 4y ago
It's the effect of persistent long-term propaganda. No government ever will ever admit that society could survive without effective government.

dncornholio 4y ago

If Covid has learned me anything, it's that people are not resilient at all and love to give it blame for their own problems. It worried me how many people thinks Covid has had a permanent impact on their lives. It's negligible imo..

stareatgoats 4y ago

> 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 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?

cudgy 4y ago
Unfortunately, the massive influence of central grid profiteers make the obviously beneficial (especially in times of disaster and war) move to micro grids progress at the slowest possible pace.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  The thing about microgrids is that maintenance falls onto the owner. You still require specialized knowledge and perhaps team of people who can handle it to maintain the microgrid and repair it. 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.

kkfx 4y ago

I suggest a far simpler technique in the modern society: just use a long list of crapware vulnerabilities. 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?

epistasis 4y ago
Ukraine's electrical grid has been under severe cyber attack for years by Russia. I suspect their defenses have come pretty hardened, and Ukrainians are no slouch when it comes to software.
- kkfx 4y ago
  Ukraine electrical grid is Soviet one, so hardly crackable from remote being essentially purely electromechanical. Westerns grids on contrary... Just to say one recent https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/microsoft-boa-server-energy-grids/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/23/microsoft-boa-server-energ...