Shooting solar

It is a concern, but people protect their neighbourhoods more than they protect random power conduits. However, if they started shooting solar you could start protecting it, at some cost of power yield, but putting it in back yards rather than roofs, or surrounded by a metal or concrete wall so there isn’t a line of sight to the panel, and putting a mesh screen over it (which blocks some of the light but also stops them from lobbing rocks.) If they are going to lob bombs, not a lot you can do about that.

But clearly external wires aren’t a workable solution, even underground — which are harder to take out but more expensive to install or fix. You still have them, still have a grid, but it doesn’t carry as much power and if they take it out, you just lose some, not all of your power.

Some forms of solar panels, like the flexible unisolar one on my roof, can probably take a bullet without being destroyed unless you hit the right place.

Neighbourhood grids can run in back yards where they are harder to sabotage. You can attack decentralized infrastructure but it’s harder. A place like Iraq would be great for wireless mesh networks, mini-grids and the like. Indeed, who needs single points of failure anywhere? It’s more efficient, but we have better tech nowadays.

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