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It's not going to end well either. See also the urgent push to switch everyone to electric from natural gas. Up until now, energy sources were diverse (oil, gas

It's not going to end well either. See also the urgent push to switch everyone to electric from natural gas. Up until now, energy sources were diverse (oil, gas, renewable). Literally everything is going to depend on a centralized grid for energy delivery. Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. We haven't seen warfare on our home turf since the 1800s and never really had to consider what happens when infrastructure gets attacked. We're only now starting to learn what happens when supply chains are compromised.

Almondsetat 3y ago
The energy sources might be diverse, but to think that the gas coming to your house or the petrol reaching the local station is anything but centralized and globalized is extremely naive
jjtheblunt 3y ago
You might have overlooked that electric grids can have ‘capacitors’ in the form of batteries at many different levels including individual homes. Is there anything similar for natural gas other than propane tanks filled by trucks?
mschuster91 3y ago
> Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. The average single-family home in Germany requires about 6 kWh a day. A single Tesla Powerwall 2 has enough capacity (14 kWh) to last two days under normal conditions, more if you reduce consumption - a home is thermal mass as well, so you can get by without heating or cooling for that timeframe. Add solar to the mix and now you'd go even longer - with a properly installed automated transfer switch you can run in "insular"/off-grid mode just as well. If you're scared about the grid going down from cyber warfare for longer times, which is a valid concern, get such a backup battery that you can also use to sell regulation capacity to the grid, and a small gas generator. There are cheap models that can run on ordinary propane gas as well as petrol (e.g. [1]), so a single 20kg propane bottle can last your entire energy demand for at least a week (and again: way longer if you cut back demand). Your greater concern at that point would be food and clean water, which you should have stacked up anyway if you're in a disaster-prone area, but no matter what there will be no scenario where the government is out of working order for more than two or three weeks. [1] https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KGG20i-DF-Dual-Fuel-Stromerzeuger-230V/KP-KGG20Ei-DF https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KG...

Almondsetat 3y ago

The energy sources might be diverse, but to think that the gas coming to your house or the petrol reaching the local station is anything but centralized and globalized is extremely naive

jjtheblunt 3y ago

You might have overlooked that electric grids can have ‘capacitors’ in the form of batteries at many different levels including individual homes. Is there anything similar for natural gas other than propane tanks filled by trucks?

mschuster91 3y ago

> Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. The average single-family home in Germany requires about 6 kWh a day. A single Tesla Powerwall 2 has enough capacity (14 kWh) to last two days under normal conditions, more if you reduce consumption - a home is thermal mass as well, so you can get by without heating or cooling for that timeframe. Add solar to the mix and now you'd go even longer - with a properly installed automated transfer switch you can run in "insular"/off-grid mode just as well. If you're scared about the grid going down from cyber warfare for longer times, which is a valid concern, get such a backup battery that you can also use to sell regulation capacity to the grid, and a small gas generator. There are cheap models that can run on ordinary propane gas as well as petrol (e.g. [1]), so a single 20kg propane bottle can last your entire energy demand for at least a week (and again: way longer if you cut back demand). Your greater concern at that point would be food and clean water, which you should have stacked up anyway if you're in a disaster-prone area, but no matter what there will be no scenario where the government is out of working order for more than two or three weeks. [1] https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KGG20i-DF-Dual-Fuel-Stromerzeuger-230V/KP-KGG20Ei-DF https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KG...