Attacks on two DTEK solar farms last spring is a good example. They destroyed many solar panels and some of the transformers, which step up voltage for long distances or step it down for use in homes. Replacing the transformers and swapping out destroyed panels allowed the farms, which generate 400 megawatts, to be back up in seven days.
Timchenko said an attack on a thermal generating station, which experienced a similar amount of damage, took three to four months to rebuild.
This is why renewable energy needs rebranding. National defense from distributed energy sources. Energy independence, no reliance on foreign oil. Disaster preparedness. Provide for your own family if you can power your own house.
New jobs by building up domestic manufacturing of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines. These days costs are coming down so you can lower electricity bills too.
Putin does not like renewable energy for this reason and allows decentralization.
Oil is also about a fifth of Russia’s entire economy, so the less it is needed the worse it is for Russia
you know what, how about people start selling renewable resources as a solution to energy independence
They already do
For me it’s the main selling point. =D
And why so many people are interested in going off-grid.
Decentralizing energy is the best defense. Solar panels belong on roofs and parking lots. Backup batteries belong in neighborhoods. That way when the power plant is down or the lines are cut off, there’s still local power available.
Military justification for an expensive national energy project?
horny government contractor noisesThis. Read about Obama era PACE financing to achieve this goal.
Edit. Fuck republicans for nuking PACE funding.
It’s true, the more decentralized the energy infrastructure, the harder it is to remove or be damaged.
Become an American patriot, secure our borders with decentralised power generation, on your roof, on your own terms!
Exactly!! Though I don’t understand why so many country’s and civilians are opposed to clean decentralised power generation such as solar, wind, thermal.
The fact that you get to generate your own “free” power, and its less likely to fail in times of natural disaster.
Its essentially “freedom” & “sticking it to the man” in one clean package. Its not what the media or propaganda calls “the green agenda”.
The fact that it also has applications in better national security is a win win.
Decentralised power generation makes you a american patriot! No a green hippy.
Yeah but wind power plants are ugly here instead of even uglier somewhere else that’s NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).
In agree there are always those few in a community that feel the need to fight everything, even it may be in their best interest and the best interest of the community as a whole.
Anecdotally, I used to live in a rural suburban neighbourhood, the type where homes have large yards between them. There was a proposal to finally put in sidewalks along the residential streets in front of the homes, by narrowing the street a little. This would allows children to walk safely to the new school built, and allow people in the neighbourhood to go on walks, or walk their dogs safely.
Anyways, the amount of push back from some residents saying it will ruin the character of the neighbourhood, or that it would remove vital street parking, or shrink their driveways.
The neighbourhood street was about 4.5 cars wide.
In the end the sidewalks got put in after someone (that did not live in the area), ran over a residents dog along the street.
it will ruin the character of the neighbourhood
“Boy, I sure love the sound and smell of cars! Imagine if people walked quietly instead, that would be awful - who would I yell at for speeding?”
after someone […] ran over a residents dog along the street.
Why does it seem like safety measures only ever get approved after someone died?
(Visibility bias, probably - a death is just a lot more noticeable than a “would have died in an alternative timeline but didn’t because…” - but that doesn’t make such deaths any less tragic)
In fairness, my understanding is that there are a lot of complications with adding distributed power to existing grids. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, just that there are engineering and safety challenges when power is coming from “everywhere” vs centrally.
And of course, there’s a lot of energy companies lobbying against clean power sources as well.
I hear that quite a bit of the power infrastructure in the US is well past its life expectancy with more coming due for replacement over time. If anything, a national energy plan should account for replacing, upgrading and modernizing a lot of the existing electrical infrastructure since its so critical to the foundation of our current society
Meanwhile, people are raising hell when grid battery installations are announced. So much so that the instructions are then cancelled.
So stupid
Ignoring transmission losses, which could be improved as well, the whole USA could be solar powered by a very tiny fraction of the deserts it has.
But that’d be a huge target to attack if it was all in one spot.
Much better to decentralize it
Ok I know they’re in the middle of a war and all but seriously how much did the guy who installed the solar panels in the thumbnail hate kids? Lol there looks like so much space to put those couple panels and they’re just like hmmmmmm howabout right here on top of the seesaw lol.
Europe should sell ukraine energy at discounted prices.
Yeah but power lines can be sabotaged or bombed
The thumb looks like something one would see in Half-Life 2, I swear…
That tracks.
Civilian life in Half-Life 2 is basically trying to survive with whatever remains after a war.
Civilian life in Ukraine is trying to survive with whatever remains during a war.
isnt the name of one of the hl2 maps “little odessa”?
HL2’s lead designer grew up in Bulgaria, so Sofia is the inspiration for City 17, and the coast is the Black Sea coast, incl. at/near Odessa.
Real life Little Odessa is in New York (there is a large community of Soviet / post-Soviet migrants there). The Half Life location is New Little Odessa though, so it sounds like it’s not where real life Little Odessa is
If the grid is down your industry is down. Large scale PV is easily and cheaply trashed with cluster munitions.
Wait until you find out how easy it is to bomb a coal plant
And how much more expensive it is to replace it
Not to mention how long it would take to build back up- even with 24/7 work, it could take weeks or months to rebuild while solar has a much shorter lead time, especially if there are stockpiles of panels around
You seem to be thinking small scale, the concept is decentralised electrical generation nation wide.
Not centralised energy generation such as a single solar plant, a single wind turbine field, a single coal plant, a single nuclear plant.
To cluster bomb a single PV plant (in one attack) would be “easy”, just as easy as a single coal plant.
To carpet bomb a whole nation (in one attack) with PV panels on every home, building, school, sports centre, field, farm would be logistically challenging.
Notes made after a storm: a panel with a 30 cm slash from flying plywood keeps producing, just somewhat less.
Geran-2 carries about 50 kg which can be a cluster munition up to 2000 km on the cheap. It is very effective when taking out large scale PV modules which are made from thermally prestressed glass.
Renewables can’t keep a grid up without fossil backup, which is by now greatly reduced. And 750 kV transformers are also very vulnerable. Ukraine grid is now entirely reliant on electricity import from neighboring countries. These high voltage lines are few.
Of the things you mention, transformer stations and baseload power stations are a real problem. One can build them inside a concrete shell, but nobody can rebuild them all.
Of course, it’s a fact of life that one cannot operate a grid without baseload generation. So baseload (thermal power stations) are the typical target. Solar parks are not. If you get a drone to a fuel tank or turbine hall, you have achieved 1000% more than landing in a solar park.
I’ve seen photos of a hole left by “Iskander” in a solar park (I cannot guess what kind of a “genius” fired it). Crater radius about 10 meters, various grades of destruction out to 50 meters. That’s a 500 kg warhead. With only 50 kilograms, would expect it to take out a circle with a radius of 25 meters. That’s some 2000 square meters, containing about 1000 square meters worth of panels. At today’s prices, panels cost about 25 € per square meter. So the damage in panels (excluding frameworks and cabling and work) is about 25 000 €. The cost of the Shahed / Geran drone is probably in the same class. But not every Shahed reaches its target - in fact, most of them don’t - so firing one at a solar park would not be economical.
A Geran-2 is a mass produced 20-30 k$ item and can carry a 50 kg payload up to 2000 km which will destroy PV modules in a 200-300 m diameter with a cluster munitions payload. Such attacks are very cost effective and can be repeated, so rebuilding doesn’t help you.
Series produced, not mass produced - I sincerely hope they won’t reach mass production, that would be harmful.
Also, they have no version with a cluster warhead. Shahed 136 drones (the most common version) have unitary warheads, some with high explosive (some with enhanced shrapnel production) and some with blast (thermobaric) effect.
A hypothetical version with cluster bomblets would of course damage solar arrays on a larger area (it helps get around the inverse square law), but the cost is: less explosive and more casing material - the bomblets would make holes in panels, but most panels would remain standing and keep producing something.
For information, this is what the result of a single cluster bomblet looks like.
