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Comment by rainsford | Hacker News Reader

The graph partway down is pretty interesting. In terms of grid battery capacity that's in the works, Australia is second only to China (albeit a fairly distant second). They're even beating the US in 3rd place, which also highlights how much we're slacking in this space.

If Australia is successful here, I wonder if it will spur more investment in places like the US. China is probably not a good bellwether since they invest in infrastructure projects like the money is burning a hole in their pocket and their unique political environment has certain advantages in terms of pushing through big projects. But if a country like Australia can leverage grid storage at scale, a lot of other countries probably can as well.

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Not in the US: the coal lobby has managed to get their product intertwined with culture wars and Manchin will reliably defect from the Democratic Party on related votes.

It's the same thing down here. The previous PM even famously brought a lump of coal into parliament.

Conversely that government was replaced by Labor in a pretty decisive victory, and the state governments on the mainland are now all Labor as well.

He did. And he also convincing lost the next election.

In that loss the red/blue line didn't move a lot (it doesn't have to move much to get a change of government). But what is notable is that prime ministers party fractured. They lost a lot of seats to a bunch of business women.

Those women look to be of the same colour politically as the prime minister - free market, fiscally conservative. But in the lingo of the culture wars they aren't "woke". They care the legacy they hand their future selves and their children. They regarded dissing our largest trading partner to the point they sanctioned our imports (which lost us billions in trade income) to make a few woke points as insanity. The regard putting effort into fostering cooperation and "just getting" along as a priority.

Thus it looks to me is what happened to Australia's culture wars is one side of the war has won. Meanwhile in the US, it looks like the battles continue.

> He did. And he also convincing lost the next election.

A little bit of a correction needed here. Morrison brought the lump of coal to parliament in February 2017 [1] when he was the treasurer in Turnbull's government. A year and a half later, in August 2018, he betrayed Turnbull during a leadership contest (initiated by another contender) and became PM. He then went on to win the next election as PM, in May 2019. It wasn't until the following election (May, 2022) that he got booted out.

So that makes a bit over 5 years between his lump of coal stunt and losing power (2 elections later). I agree that his obnoxious, non-serious antics in the renewable energy / fossil fuel debate contributed to the rise of the 'Teal' independents that were pivotal in his loss of the 2022 election, but I don't think that stunt was a proximate cause, as you seem to be suggesting.

[1] https://theconversation.com/that-lump-of-coal-73046

Yes, you're right. It does read like I'm making a connection between the coal incident and the last electoral loss. That wasn't my intention.

Nonetheless the presentation of that lump of coal in parliament was a loud shot in the cultural war, and I'm sure Morrison was proud of it at the time. But history has not been kind as while the side firing that shot won the day, they lost the war. That lump of coal looks like a polished turd now.

As you say, they didn't lose the cultural war because of that shot. I suspect that loss was caused by COVID, bush fires and then floods. "We will do what we bloody well want and screw the future" becomes less appealing after nature delivers a lesson on what that future could be.

We’re still set to sunset a third of coal power plants in the next 6 years. The economics just don’t work anymore.

It's even more interesting when you consider how much bigger China and the US are compared to Australia.

Edit: although I do wonder if all the "planned" projects will become reality

Probably a dumb question, but would mass-batterification leave our society extremely vulnerable to EMP?

To a certain extent we are already extremely vulnerable to an EMP attack, from people living with a pacemaker, to vehicles relying on an Electronic Control Unit to perform fundamental things.

Batteries are not in danger from an EMP. Sensitive electronic components are in danger. https://www.agilesurvival.com/emp-effect-batteries/

I don't see anything concrete here, and there's a ridiculously false statement that brushes everything away:

> However, no one does High-altitude detonation experiments anymore. ... Since then, we have all kinds of new batteries, including lithium and rechargeable batteries.

There are MIL specs for this, with test systems that emulate it [1], including some impressive mobile systems, from what I've been told. These tests happen all the time as a requirement for some equipment.

The sensitive component in a battery would be the power management IC/circuit. No sane system will draw power from a battery without an ok from the power management circuitry. But, then you have everything else attached.

1. https://www.elitetest.com/mil-std-461-testing

The Department of Homeland Security has not identified EMP as a high-risk threat, and thus has not included it in its 15 all-hazards National planning scenarios.

From "THE EMP THREAT: EXAMINING THE CONSEQUENCES" a house hearing. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg80856/html/C...

Of course a house hearing isn't a great way to argue ones point, but it does make me less apprehensive about an EMP attack.

I think they meant 'batteries as a system', not the individual cells and grid tied batteries have a very large amount of electronics to charge, discharge and protect the batteries.

Is there evidence that batteries as a system are more vulnerable to EMP than the current electric grid? More so, is there evidence that EMP is a viable threat? Ensure the battery grid has the same uptime or better than the current grid and call it a day.

Also, thank you for the reminder of the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

EMP weapons are a scifi myth.

It takes a lot of energy to generate an EMP that would do any damage (think, nuclear bomb levels of energy). And even then, the area of effect would be less than a mile or two radius.

If someone wanted to attack a grid, well placed C4 would be cheaper and more practical (See moore county substation attack).

High altitude nuclear detonations cause powerful EMP effects over a large area. The US famously discovered this by accident in the 60s with the Starfish Prime nuclear tests, which caused EMP damage in Hawaii almost 1000 miles from the detonation.

Yes, and if nukes are being used like this then the world is ending anyway, as the en masse retaliatory nukes aren't going to be set for upper atmospheric detonation only.

EMP does not have to man made to be a problem .

Solar flares and CMEs are the real concern for system wide damage that can set us back by years if not decades .

The last couple of years showed how fragile our supply chains are ,

A large scale event can damage critical equipment like transformers that take years to manufacture, merely restarting a stopped grid is extremely complex let alone a broken one

Not any more so then we're already at risk from nuclear explosions and X-class flares pointed at earth. In the case of nuclear weapons going off and creating EMPs, were going to have a lot of other problems in that case already.

Very few pieces of our current tech are immune to EMPs, the only cars that would work are old diesels pretty much.

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