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How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

practical.engineering

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Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#181

Post by Kamq »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #114
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only like 300 * $100 for the panels if you buy them used. That's less than a Model 3. Installation usually costs far far more than the panels. If you have plenty of room and you can install them on the ground, and you are remote enough you can do it without permits or permits are easy to deal with (so really this means not California or New York) and wind isn't a huge concern (so not the Atlantic or Gulf coast…

> That's only like 300 * $100 for the panels if you buy them used. That's less than a Model 3. Installation usually costs far far more than the panels. I brought it up more for the space requirements. That’s a physically huge system. Panels are only a fraction of the overall cost. Unless you have a massive commercial building somewhere, 300 panels are going to take up a huge amount of ground-mount space. You also nee…

A couple hundred panels is less than half an acre or so.

Which, yeah, completely un-doable in manhattan (they already rules out NY anyways), but 10 acre lots are a thing in plenty of places.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#182

Post by brnt »

epistasis wrote: post #61

I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. Perhaps not all countries will be as determined as the Ukrainians are in their constant repairs, but even with half of their generation capability destroyed, and so many substations targeted, the effe…

Perhaps worthy to note that the timing of the invasion coincided with an EU-Ukraine test of syncing up their power networks. A wholesale switch of Ukraine away from synchronisation with Russia and permanent synchronisation with the EU was planned later in 2022. Interrupting this switch, and the Ukrainian resilience against Russian manipulation through power was likely a reason to start the war when it started.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#183

Post by radu_floricica »

paganel wrote: post #175
radu_floricica wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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…

We actually have a pretty awesome energy mix in Romania. It's a hard thing to rank, but we could be in the top 3. A lot of hydro, a fair amount of nuclear and we're expanding the nuclear, and a bit of hydro as well. Plus quite a bit of wind, and an almost-working program to encourage private individuals to install solar and sell back to the network.

Yes, as part of that mix we had some horribly dirty old school plants. I'm not contesting that they should be replaced per se - but the current thread is about flexibility, and the way it was done left no wiggle room whatsoever. And now we have absurdly high energy prices, Moldova is in danger of going dark, and we probably could be doing more to export power to Ukraine. All because some politicians guessed wrong, at a moment when it was already pretty clear this whole direction is dangerous. The local legislation happened, I think, only last year.

It's not a new story, politicians making bad decisions. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out when they do, especially when it's costing all of us. And speaking of, what they should really do now is unlock the solar power program - which on paper forces the utilities companies to buy back power, but in practice allows them to drag their feet indefinitely.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#184

Post by landoftheice »

baq wrote: post #171
snoopy_telex wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience differs. The right leaning members of my family strongly support Russia and the left leaning strongly support Ukraine. It’s caused a lot of strife in my family. And I don’t think the right folks feel like they’re on the fringe. They do watch a lot of Fox, but they’re not Q folks, afaik at least.

I honestly can’t comprehend how it is possible to support Russia in the US after the Cold War and Putin. I literally have a blank space in my mind when thinking about that.

No post body was provided.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#185

Post by pmontra »

vxNsr wrote: post #174
baq wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can’t comprehend how it is possible to support Russia in the US after the Cold War and Putin. I literally have a blank space in my mind when thinking about that.

I agree and my guess is this “support of russia” is really just opposition to sending billions to Ukraine. Some might argue that’s the same thing, but to many on the right it’s not.

Isn't at least a part of those billions going back to the USA as purchases of American weapons? They are subsidies to American workers.

Example from https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...

> The $21.7 billion in Pentagon funding is “for equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support,” according to a summary table accompanying the supplemental request.

And anyway, if the USA wants to keep benefitting from their empire they have to pay the costs to maintain and expand it. No more money, the empire shrinks and other countries take what's American now.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#187

Post by f137 »

epistasis wrote: post #61

I'm surprised that this article doesn't even mention the ongoing, continual attacks on the civilian Ukrainian electrical grid, in a concerted effort to take it out with thousands of cruise missiles and loitering drones. Perhaps not all countries will be as determined as the Ukrainians are in their constant repairs, but even with half of their generation capability destroyed, and so many substations targeted, the effe…

Your Kyiv teacher is lucky. Blackouts vary a lot between regions and even within a single town. We have a distributed team and track blackouts in daytime, 8am-8pm. A couple of people had no blackouts so far whatsoever, a few had about 40 hours off out of 60 last workweek. The median is somewhere between 25-30. It is getting worse gradually.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#188

Post by pmontra »

paganel wrote: post #175
radu_floricica wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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…

> 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

Do you mean, lack of capacity in the power lines to that regions?

> only cars with odd numbers which should be allowed travel during weekend

That was also the norm in Italy during the oil crisis. It was done more recently as an anti pollution measure too.

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#189

Post by Kamq »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #21
acidburnNSA wrote: post #17

A lot of old Cold War preparatory war game scenarios start with EMPs blanketing the continental US. It only takes a few (like 1) nuclear weapon detonations in thin atmosphere (a few dozen km up) where the primary heat transfer mechanism is radiative (vs. convective, conductive) to cause enough EMP to take out pretty much the entire continental US grid. The military is fully hardened against EMP. Civilian infrastructu…

But is the military hardened against deserters, starving soldiers, starving military families, and so forth caused by civilian infrastructure collapse? I doubt it. If you can’t feed or heat/cool people, alliances quickly change - especially if you have no way of tracking who becomes AWOL. As far as I know, military bases don’t have their own nuclear reactors or coal plants. EDIT: Apparently the DoD requires diesel ba…

You... really don't want to challenge the US federal government to a game of war.

I mean, it's possible to win, but it requires 10-20 years and having quite a bit of your country destroyed (and possibly a couple countries near yours). Or at least, that's what's required when you can broadcast what's going on to the populace to turn them against the war. What it takes to defeat the US military when the populace can't communicate electronically is actually much more poorly defined.

This is really only a good strategy for countries with low-levels of infrastructure and a ruling faction with a strong ideological commitment against the US. So, places like Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Also, there's a decent stockpile of food for feeding the soldiers (and probably their families, although someone else might be able to speak to that better).

Re: How long would society last during a total grid collapse?

#190

Post by pmontra »

jes5199 wrote: post #119
radu_floricica wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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

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.
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