4 ms·

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

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
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    That's a misguided view. Giant amounts of money were pumped into rural parts, mostly under EU agricultural funds, cohesion policy and other similar programs.
- pmontra 4y ago
  If I have to start generating my power now, with no preparation and a failed grid, I think my only option is logging and burn wood. At least I can cook with that and heat a room.
  - jes5199 4y ago
    maybe that’s true today but within five years I bet the economics will have pushed you and your neighbors to install at least some amount of solar and batteries
    - pmontra 4y ago
      That was already planned for but I don't know if I could rely on the sun in winter when maybe it's cloudy for a couple of weeks, plus the shorter days.
paganel 4y ago
The issue with those was that they were indeed very ecologically dirty, especially the lignite mines from Gorj. You can actually see the devastation that they have brought on the ecosystem even from satellite images [1]. I agree though, if one takes a step back and looks at the whole thing (i.e. if you add the socio-economic conditions) this was a very bad decision. 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 cars with odd numbers which should be allowed travel during weekends, energy "rationing" 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, a book which 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 "how 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 now 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/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8953743,23.1365373,18333m/da... [2] https://www.targulcartii.ro/wolf-hafele/energia-intr-o-lume-finita-politica-1983-180792?hqghlTsaAheCEALw_wcB https://www.targulcartii.ro/wolf-hafele/energia-intr-o-lume-... [3] https://www.targulcartii.ro/i-popescu/energia-incotro-scrisul-romanesc-1978-719299RHgsaAvzHEALw_wcB https://www.targulcartii.ro/i-popescu/energia-incotro-scrisu...

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
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  That's a misguided view. Giant amounts of money were pumped into rural parts, mostly under EU agricultural funds, cohesion policy and other similar programs.
pmontra 4y ago
If I have to start generating my power now, with no preparation and a failed grid, I think my only option is logging and burn wood. At least I can cook with that and heat a room.
- jes5199 4y ago
  maybe that’s true today but within five years I bet the economics will have pushed you and your neighbors to install at least some amount of solar and batteries
  - pmontra 4y ago
    That was already planned for but I don't know if I could rely on the sun in winter when maybe it's cloudy for a couple of weeks, plus the shorter days.

paganel 4y ago

The issue with those was that they were indeed very ecologically dirty, especially the lignite mines from Gorj. You can actually see the devastation that they have brought on the ecosystem even from satellite images [1]. I agree though, if one takes a step back and looks at the whole thing (i.e. if you add the socio-economic conditions) this was a very bad decision. 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 cars with odd numbers which should be allowed travel during weekends, energy "rationing" 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, a book which 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 "how 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 now 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/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8953743,23.1365373,18333m/da... [2] https://www.targulcartii.ro/wolf-hafele/energia-intr-o-lume-finita-politica-1983-180792?hqghlTsaAheCEALw_wcB https://www.targulcartii.ro/wolf-hafele/energia-intr-o-lume-... [3] https://www.targulcartii.ro/i-popescu/energia-incotro-scrisul-romanesc-1978-719299RHgsaAvzHEALw_wcB https://www.targulcartii.ro/i-popescu/energia-incotro-scrisu...