Thread

In Ukraine, distributed renewables foil Russia's assaults

169 points · 195 comments · JumpCrisscross

thelastgallon · 1791106569 · focus · HN ↗
Fossil fuel supply chain makes your country very vulnerable!
<a href="https://github.com/Lkruitwagen/global-fossil-fuel-supply-chain" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Lkruitwagen/global-fossil-fuel-supply-cha...: The resulting complex network has 6.09mn nodes and 15.70mn edges and is implemented in a graph database. With estimates of annual coal, gas, and oil demand in 13,229 global population centres and 8,165 global power stations, we use a minimum-cost flow method to estimate global asset-level energy flows.
If you want to protect your country, here are your options:
1) Invest in nuclear power and nukes (source of Uranium may be a concern). See North Korea vs Iran.
2) Solar on every structure, every vehicle is an EV. This will be the most resilient, distributed grid that can never be disrupted. Node level failures (hail on roof breaks solar) can be easily overcome. EVs are batteries on wheels! They can go charge and come back. Some on this forum may be familiar with Cattle vs Pet, Redundancy, Resiliency, Virtualization (--> Virtual Power Plants), etc -- same concepts, but applied to power generation which is designed as a monolithic circuit switched network. The idea of energy as packets, which can be Store-and-Forward (using batteries) will change everything we know about energy.
1. ghtbircshotbe · 1791122413 · focus · HN ↗
  No one will attack North Korea because they are backed by China. I'm not sure how nuclear weapons helps them unless they split from China. Maybe they make money selling the tech to others.
  1. novaleaf · 1791128541 · focus · HN ↗
    I think nobody threatens NK because they have 10k artillery pieces in range of SK capital, and have all sorts of NCB munitions to use.
  2. theptip · 1791129163 · focus · HN ↗
    China’s support constrains them of course. And even if they don’t want to split, having the option to do so strengthens their negotiating position as well.
  3. openasocket · 1791130003 · focus · HN ↗
    A defense pact doesn’t always hold, though. Poland had a mutual defense pact with France and the UK in September 1939. And even if China were to aide the DPRK in a crisis, the DPRK would be the junior partner in that arrangement. In this scenario, if China is providing the lions share of manpower and weapons, they get to decide strategy, and dictate terms for war termination.
    The DPRKs primary goal is preservation of the Kim regime above all else. That’s why the DPRK over the last 70+ years has focused on Juche, a principle of self-reliance. The vast majority of their weapon systems are of indigenous designs and manufacture. And why they have developed and deployed an independent nuclear deterrent.
    lesuorac · 1791138244 · focus · HN ↗
    The defense pact for Poland held, GB and France entered a war because of it.
    China is a bit closer to DPRK though and shares a land border so its a but easier for them to assist.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.