Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

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Energy infrastructure has been targeted in the Iran-Israel-US conflict. Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been. People think petroleum has some unique risk here. Really it is energy being targeted by military means. Doesn't matter how a nation or economy sources its energy, it will be a high value target.

Consider if the entire world was solar powered today. Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead. Gulf states target iran solar plants. Prices of panel materials surge just like oil prices surge today in response to the demand brought on to the supply chain. Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

The world is all too easy to disrupt in the very same way it is being disrupted in terms of oil today, thanks to the asymmetries brought on by drone and missile warfare in this new era.

> Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been.

Oil and gas infrastructure is full of choke points like pipelines, port facilities, storage facilities and large, concentrated refineries that supply entire country's worth of fuel. There is no central choke point in a solar based grid.

> Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead.

A drone exploding in a solar plant will take out what, a couple hundred solar panels? The rest will keep working once you blow the dust off.

You set one oil storage tank on fire and it takes care of everything else in its vicinity.

Not to mention solar can be truly decentralized. You can just buy a solar panel, plug it in your outlet and start generating electricity. You can turn every house into a solar power plant if you want and an enemy will have to bomb every house to get them offline.

> Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities.

Iran will totally just go to war against china to prevent more solar panels from being made, yeah.

>There is no central choke point in a solar based grid.

The distribution becomes the target, not the generation. I agree with most of the other things you're saying, about how I can generate a small amount of electricity on my own if I buy a PV system. That's irrelevant, however.

Destroy oil supply and there is a crisis in 12h. Destroy solar supply and there's a crisis in... 20 years? It'd actually be much sooner but the point is that it's much less urgent that oil.

Destroy solar supply chain and then your main solar generating plants and there is a crisis that day as well.

Sure but certainly you understand that's far more complex to do than taking out a single oil refinery next to your country that affects the whole work and is the only reason a country like Iran has any power at all?

They can just target the Suez Canal and wreak similar economic havoc. They can target the Temple Mount if they wanted to really see the world rise up and burn. It isn't the only accessible linchpin even in the region. It is just perhaps the closest one to hit when throwing a stone.

As terrible as the human cost would be if Iran and the other Gulf states were to target each others' solar plants, it would be contained to tha region. India, and China, and America, and Africa, and Europe's PV would continue to generate electricity. Compared to what we have now, where a war in one part of the world makes energy expensive everywhere else.

Not to mention: PV generation is way more distributed than drilling oil and gas. Commercial PV generation facilities are smaller and more spread out. And even if the enemy bombs them all in a war, you can disconnect your rooftop solar panels from the grid and keep your house going. Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard?

I'll repeat it again: you don't burn solar panels to make energy. We need growing numbers of panels today because we're going solar. If the world were already at 100% solar then we wouldn't need nearly as much manufacturing or mining. We'd mostly just recycle old panels.

This is unlike fossil fuels. If you burn gas you will always need new gas. Forever.

>Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard?

Well, in the context of the US, we certainly do. And yet, our prices go up, because of course they would. In every domestic produced industry prices would go up if global supply were diminished. This is just how a globalized economy works. People assume a degree of economic isolation with solar that just isn't realistic with how the economy is structured today. It might have been realistic 100 years ago but today it is not.

I meant in your literal backyard.

And you bring up an excellent point with the globalized economy. Solar plants being bombed in a faraway country's war won't drive up the cost of your electricity because (most of the time) your electricity can't be exported. But oil can. If oil becomes expensive outside America, it becomes expensive within America. Even if America has its own oil.

What do you think the response will be if the supply chain can't source replacement parts? the grid is damaged every year from storms and wind in addition to routine replacement of parts and end of life replacement. Typically we've seen power companies when they say are handsomely fined for causing a wildfire and having to pay out repair and legal fees that they just raise rates for that behavior, rather than shouldering the consumer from some blow out of the goodness of their heart.

> What do you think the response will be if the supply chain can't source replacement parts?

No idea what we're even talking about now. We went from "solar panels are an intolerable supply chain dependency" to "well the grid needs new transformers and power lines too" as a reason to not switch to solar. Grids will need new transformers and power lines if they're powered by coal too. Do you want to go full dieselpunk or steampunk? Or live in caves wearing animal hides?

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