This is well written and an interesting read but, embedding notebooks into your data pipelines smells horrible.
Readit Newsprobablypower commented on Representing Python notebooks as dataflow graphs marimo.io/blog/dataflow... · Posted by u/akshayka
probablypower commented on · Posted by u/gnabgib
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 commented on Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Gains Momentum in the U.S. spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear... · Posted by u/rbanffy
> Solar: needs unforeseen advances in energy storage tech, also hilariously inefficient
The storage tech exists and is in practice right now, no advancements needed.
Also, it's not inefficient at all, what do you mean by that?
> Geothermal
This is far more promising than nuclear. Enhanced geothermal is opening up massive regions, and the tech is undergoing massive advancement by adopting the huge technology leap form fracking. It is completely dispatchable, and can even have some short term daily storage just by regulating inputs and outputs.
> Wind
Storage solves this today
In the 2000s, I felt like you did. But since about 2015, it's hard for me to understand your views. Especially after seeing what happened at Summer in South Carolina and Vogtle in Georgia, it's clear that nuclear faces larger technological hurdles than solar, geothermal, or wind. Storage changes everything, it's economical, and it's being deployed in massive amounts on grids where economics rule the day (which isn't many of them, since most of our grids are controlled by regulated monopolies).
> 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 commented on 2025 Iberia Blackout Report [pdf] media.licdn.com/dms/docum... · Posted by u/leymed
That... doesn't sound correct. Inverters are the cheap part, you can literally wire as many as you want in parallel. Batteries have immense power availability, with most chemistries you can trivially deliver the entire capacity in half an hour or so (more like 5 minutes with lithium cells).
Basically I'm dubious. I'm sure there are grids somewhere that have misprovisioned their inverter capacity, but I don't buy that battery facilities are inherently unable to buffer spikes. Is there a cite I can read?
You can google "system inertia" as a starting point.
The article didn't do enough literature review, this isn't a new idea: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811...
> They have long tongues, that they used to catch bugs.
Shouldn't "that" be "which" in this sentence?
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 commented on Launch HN: Silurian (YC S24) – Simulate the Earth · Posted by u/rejuvyesh
We want to branch out to industries which are highly dependent on weather. That way we can integrate their data together with our core competency: the weather and climate. Some examples include the energy grid, agriculture, logistics, and defense.
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 commented on Here's a puzzle game. I call it Reverse the List of Integers mathstodon.xyz/@two_star/... · Posted by u/self
the best I can find for [7, 5, 3] is:
7 5 3
7 1 4 3
2 5 1 4 3
2 5 1 7
2 6 7
2 1 5 7
3 5 7
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.
It’s interesting that it took 3 years from the physical test until paper publication.
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 commented on Future power systems with today's weather model.energy/future/... · Posted by u/deverton
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.