The right answer is 'yes to all the above'. Yes, we need solar. Yes, we need wind. Yes, we need batteries and, yes, we should be looking at geothermal. Solar has shown us, again, how artificially holding back a technology for decades has massive costs. Investing a few billion into geothermal right now is cheap and can only lead to a more durable energy infrastructure in the future. There are all sorts of benefits to a rich ecosystem of power generation. Solar and batteries may be amazing but global supply chains can be disrupted. Similarly, having multiple solutions means that niche use cases have more options and a larger likelihood of finding an acceptable solution. So, yes to all of the above. We are big enough to try them all.

▲ bryanlarsen 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Solar and batteries may be amazing but global supply chains can be disrupted.

Solar and batteries aren't consumables, so they're not particularly vulnerable to supply chain disruption. If we lose our supply of batteries, we'll have ~10 years or so to find an alternate supply. We won't be able to do new installations during the disruption, but existing installations don't stop working.

Unlike a fossil plant when the supply of fuel is disrupted.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> but existing installations don't stop working. They will, albeit slowly.
	▲	hvb2 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You may need small amounts of rare earth elements. Those are definitely a supply chain nightmare.

▲ senectus1 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

nobody ever seems to recognize the benefits of Modularising your grid as well.

Ukraine is an excellent example of why centralizing your grid energy source is a bad plan... but not just for war situations. If you have an agile, adaptable modular grid you can recover for any form of disaster (natural or man made) very quickly and cheaply.

I really feel this is an under valued aspect of electrification and greening of the power sources we use.

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hvb2 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This feels a bit like talking in hindsight.

With fossil power plants, the bigger plants were more efficient. This lead to centralization. We now find ourselves in a situation where you can end up with a lot of small/local generation.

What happened in Ukraine can probably happen in almost every developed country today as this was all built/planned in a different time.

	▲	senectus1 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		yeah I'm not saying that they messed up, I'm saying that we dont appear to be taking note from the situation. Doing better based one the world as it is now and how history has played out.

▲ iso1631 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

One thing which is needed too is spinning load, the grid depends on having enough inertia to maintain the frequency. Flywheels I assume would do that.

▲ iSnow 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is being done and it's called synthetic inertia. Just with capacitors and batteries instead of spinning motors.

▲ _whiteCaps_ 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Caterpillar provides some really neat small scale flywheel UPS - used in places like hospitals where it would be very bad to lose power. They last long enough for the diesel gennies to start up.

	▲	kaonwarb an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I saw these in the basement of a data center about 11-12 years ago. Most steampunk thing I've seen in real life.
	▲	senectus1 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I've worked on mine sites that use this as well.

▲ bryanlarsen 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Inverters and batteries (or any other DC source) are also very good at doing this.

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iso1631 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Not grid following inverters, or "any DC source", as we saw in Spain in Summer

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jamescrowley 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nothing to do with the blackout in Spain - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/what-caused-iberian-... - voltage surge and various thermal power generators failing to provide the voltage correction services they were being paid for

But yes, grid following alone does not provided the required stability - synthetic inertia etc needed

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bryanlarsen 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, if you don't install grid stabilization inverters, they don't supply grid stabilization.

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icehawk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

From what I saw: In Spain, inverters are not allowed to provide voltage control, and what we saw in Spain, was a voltage spike that caused generators to drop offline, which then caused frequency issues.

	▲	robocat 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		See report and first comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44358668 It looked to me that regulators wanted to make solar the scapegoat for political reasons. The report indicates to me that different operators were using a random monkey theory to make changes until the grid stabilised (they clearly didn't have a handle on the root cause of the instabilities). The regulator screwed up: they are supposed to engineer the network so it can be stable (even in the face of political pressure).

▲ defrost 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ignore the clickbait headline here: Australia’s Solar Boom Is Breaking the Grid - Or Is It?

It's a sub 15 minute actual grid engineering for lay public explainer video (I know, I'm not a video fan either)

A better duller title might be: How Australia's Grid is being adapted to Solar Boom

  00:00 Introduction
  01:23 The Problem with Too Much Solar
  03:29 Batteries Change the Economics
  05:40 What the Grid Actually Needs
  07:04 A Cautionary Tale – The 2025 Iberian Blackout
  08:21 Australia’s Secret Weapon – Experience with Weak Grids
  10:08 The Genius Technical Fix – Grid-Forming Inverters
  12:25 The Perfect Partner - Batteries
  12:58 From Mechanical to Software-Defined Stability
  13:42 Conclusion – Fixing the Grid Before It Breaks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qavFbOpt4jA