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probablypower

483 karma · joined June 30, 2019

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probablypower··on Timestral: Mistral's time-series foundation models
As an energy retailer, I have 10k+ timeseries.
probablypower··on Micron CEO Says Memory Supply Will Be Much Tighter in 2027 and 2028 Than in 2026
If I made a similar statement in my industry, I would be jailed or at least heavily fined for market manipulation.
probablypower··on We've made the world too complicated
every solution engineers a greater problem. Solving horse poop with cars -> Climate change
probablypower··on 72% of the dollar's purchasing power was destroyed in just four episodes
This study doesn't correct for baseline exponential decay due to inflation, to better highlight the meaningful variations. By comparing based on 1914 dollars it also causes old variations to be relatively more extreme and newer inflationary events to look less extreme. You must compare apples to apples.

Finally the events are quite cherry-picked. It is a conclusion looking for a result, when the statistical reason for choosing those 4 events simply isn't evident when you look at the data itself. There is no mathematical rule you could apply to your dataset that would distinctly highlight those 4 periods.

probablypower··on A train-sized tunnel is now carrying electricity under South London
First guess (may be wrong) is to manage thermal expansion/contraction constantly on a micro-scale.
probablypower··on CATL expects oceanic electric ships in three years
60 MWh continuously means inf MW.
probablypower··on Researchers Discover the Optimal Way to Optimize
It is not a mistake, it is just being cheeky.
probablypower··on Jeff Bezos says AI is in a bubble but society will get 'gigantic' benefits
> Remind me again why we need investors to fund bad ideas?

A lot of good ideas only look bad in hindsight. It costs time and money to determine goodness, and that deserves funding.

probablypower··on Meta Ray-Ban Display
The penultimate final frontier, adverts directly in front of your eyeballs 24/7, and tracking not just your position but your attention.

Only step beyond this is neural implants putting purchasing decisions directly into your grey matter.

probablypower··on Europe is locking itself in to US LNG
There are a lot of posts here pushing batteries.

Batteries are an expensive solution that doesn't scale well at the grid level. It is useful for grid stability (fast frequency response) but simply a non-starter when you're dealing with national grids.

Batteries are an added cost to the system, without producing more electricity, and as a result prices will go up.

A far cheaper source of flexibility is Demand Side Response. Particularly data centres that are willing to be market actors. Compute can happen anywhere, so it should happen where the wind blows and the sun shines. It is cheaper to transmit bits than Megawatts.

probablypower··on Europe is locking itself in to US LNG
Please look at: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/CN/72h/hourly

China is heavily reliant on coal.

The US Grid is presently less carbon intensive than the Chinese grid.

probablypower··on Europe is locking itself in to US LNG
This is an insane suggestion if you had a concept for how expensive batteries are and the scale of flexibility issues on the european grid.

It also does nothing to help transmission grid frequency stability and control.

probablypower··on Europe is locking itself in to US LNG
Batteries don't provide meaningful flexibility on a continental scale. They're useful in localised frequency control or microgrid flexibility.

An exercise to the reader, calculate the space and materials required to replace the average norwegian hydro reservoir with batteries.

Nuclear tech doesn't provide required ramp rates at a useful price. I do agree however that more nuclear helps.

The problem is dispatchability/flexibility, not storage. At a more complex level the issue is grid inertia and frequency response.

probablypower··on Europe is locking itself in to US LNG
This is confidently incorrect.

Gas power generation is a necessary evil to balance out the variability of intermittent energy generation (i.e. wind and solar).

Hydropower isn't a feasible alternative because the easy resources have been developed.

The only alternative source of flexibility available today is demand side response.

Edit: I appreciate the down votes, as I've not explained in detail. It is a complex issue. My opinions are based on having a phd in the topic, 10+ years in control rooms, years of market operations and design, and years contributing to europe-wide risk assessment methodologies.

I emplore anyone who is actually interested in how energy mix actually impacts grid stability/reliability to look into the Eirgrid DS3 programme (https://www.eirgrid.ie/ds3-programme-delivering-secure-susta...).

probablypower··on Folks, we have the best π
Is 2 a number?

Is 4 a number?

Is 4/2 a number?

Is 3 a number?

Is 3/2 a number?

etc...

All of these symbols represent precise points on the numberline. Pi also represents a precise point on the numberline, so is it not a number?

probablypower··on Representing Python notebooks as dataflow graphs
This is well written and an interesting read but, embedding notebooks into your data pipelines smells horrible.
probablypower··on [dead]
I'm sorry, but this blogvertisement is so far up its own jargon hole that it is impossible to read it as anything more than: "we are inventing a problem that you can pay us to solve".
probablypower··on Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Gains Momentum in the U.S.
> The storage tech exists and is in practice right now, no advancements needed.

The existence of the tech isn't the issue, it is the logistics, cost and practicality of building it at grid scale. If you try to calculate how many batteries you'd need to store the equivalent energy of a hydro reservoir, or one hour of a nuclear plant, then try to estimate the land required, you'd quickly discover how intractable the issue is.

probablypower··on 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf]
You can google "system inertia" as a starting point.
probablypower··on The Birmingham Blade: geographically tailored urban wind turbine designed by AI
The article didn't do enough literature review, this isn't a new idea: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811...
probablypower··on Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?
Should be any of:

- They had long tongues that they used to catch bugs.

- They have long tongues that they use to catch bugs.

- They had long tongues, which they used to catch bugs.

- They have long tongues, which they use to catch bugs.

probablypower··on Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth
you'll have trouble simulating the grid, but for energy data you might want to look at (or get in touch with) these people: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

They're a cool little team based in Copenhagen. Would be useful, for example, to look at the correlation between your weather data and regional energy production (solar and wind). Next level would be models to predict national hydro storage, but that is a lot more complex.

My advice is to drop the grid itself to the bottom of the list, and I say this as someone who worked at a national grid operator as the primary grid analyst. You'll never get access to sufficient data, and your model will never be correct. You're better off starting from a national 'adequacy' level and working your way down based on information made available via market operators.

probablypower··on Here's a puzzle game. I call it Reverse the List of Integers
I came to the exact same solution.

My feel for this type of puzzle is that there is a 'gravity' from the higher to lower value integers. So you want to help integers flow from the 7 to the 3. The state of the list then represents a sieve that dynamically restricts the flow paths from one step to the next. So at any time step your possible paths to flow the integers from 7 to 3 are quite restricted.

The first step of 753 -> 7143 may seem arbitrary at first, but you quickly realise that most other options result in long awkward paths where you move integers back and forth, or deadends.

For example, if you decide to split the 7 first your valid moves are 753 -> 6153 or 753 -> 1653. The first move still leaves you overloaded at the left most position, and you still need another split because you cant combine 1+5 or 5+3 due to duplicates or exceeding 7. So you don't really feel closer. Same with 1653, putting you in a position where all combinations exceed 7, and you need to further breakdown numbers, but you've already used up all your valid odd numbers, so you have to break 6 into 2 and 4 -> 12453. This is a dead end.

Fun morning coffee puzzle.

probablypower··on Tests show high-temperature superconducting magnets are ready for fusion
Publications often take a long time. Particularly novel topics that are difficult to review due to a lack of comparative material or willing expertise.

The fact that it took 3 years is a positive, as it means multiple parties rigorously reviewed and approved the material.

probablypower··on Future power systems with today's weather
Cool toy, but this is a basic simulation of energy markets. You can't talk about future power systems without addressing system inertia, unless you dont care about being realistic.
probablypower··on Private equity piling on debt like never before
This post means literally nothing. Please put in more effort, or refrain from contributing to discussions where you have no value to provide.
probablypower··on Private equity piling on debt like never before
This is great, thank you (not OP).

Is it more reasonable to understand this as:

a. Private Equity is running out of cheap sources of money, so it is resorting to risky high interest sources.

b. Private Equity sees a lot of present opportunity and are willing to take on even high interest debt because there are clear opportunities for higher interest returns.

c. Private Equity got into the pantry and their risk appetite is all messed up and self-destructive

?

probablypower··on Are we stuck with the Zoo Hypothesis?
This seems like a lazy, sensationalist article.

If it is going to entertain the zoo hypothesis, it should also entertain the dark forest hypothesis among others. It is a false dichotomy to say "zoo or nothing".

probablypower··on Figure 01 has learned to make coffee
If this is making coffee, I don't want to live in this android future.
probablypower··on Grid operator to interfere in Finnish electricity market after bidding error
It is a pretty fundamental flaw in market implementation if producers can bid significantly more than they can physically provide. We (other European country grid operator) run checks on every submitted market order to ensure it is both physically reasonable and that there is equivalent resources on the market to buy/sell to the order. Hopefully the market operator can learn from this mistake in giving market participants such a large foot gun.
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