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In Ukraine, distributed renewables foil Russia's assaults

169 points · 195 comments · JumpCrisscross

  1. gnull · · focus · HN ↗
    This is greenwashing.

    The article suggests that renewables are somehow more helpful in a war when your grid is targeted by drones and missiles. It doesn't do a comparison to back it up though.

    Decentralized power production vs. centralized does make sense: decentralized doesn't offer a single point of failure taking out which causes a lot of damage.

    But can't energy from fossil fuels be generated in a decentralized manner too? Sounds only better than renewables because it doesn't go up and down throughout a day, and doesn't need grid to amortize the jumps.

    Renewables sort of need to be out there in the open to harvest energy from the elements. Solar needs sunlight, wind needs to spin its huge blades in open air. A diesel generator, on the other hand, perfectly goes underground, much harder to target.

    So the article doesn't really establish that renewables offer a clear advantage over fossils in a war.

    Upd: some comments below have convinced me that fossils don't decentralize as easily as renewables.

    1. hdgvhicv · · focus · HN ↗
      A drone blows up 1kWp solar panel you lose about 1Mwh in a year assuming it’s completely broken.

      A drone blows up an oil carrying road vehicle you lose 350Mwh instantly.

      You blow up a pipeline you knock out 1 million MWh a day

      1. gnull · · focus · HN ↗
        The drone will disbale more than one of those 1kW panels if it hits an array of them. Panels are stationary, easier to target than vehicles.

        Could you also motivate the choice to compare Wh of energy lost, instead of, say, US dollar cost of the damage? Sounds a bit odd, because Wh is not the currency I pay bills with.

        How much does it cost to replace an array of solar panels, compared to the cost of sending another diesel truck (and paying for the destroyed one + its fuel)?

        1. hdgvhicv · · focus · HN ↗
          The diesel alone in the fuel truck that used to fill my 1000l oil fired tank costs far more than the number of solar panels a single drone could destroy, let alone the cost of the truck itself.

          Hell my 1000l tank alone costs more even when empty.

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