[cesarb]

> the author is looking at nameplate capacity, which is a completely useless metric for variable electricity production sources

For solar panels, the nameplate capacity is usually also the power generated at the peak production time, which is the moment when an attacker turning off all inverters at the same time would have the most impact.

That is: for an attack (or any other failure), the most important metric is not the total power produced, but the instantaneous power production, which is the amount which has to be absorbed by the "spinning reserve" of other power plants when one power plant suddenly goes offline.

[wiredfool]

No, the nameplate capacity is what a solar panel will produce under perfect lighting, independent of the site where it's installed.

The peak theoretical power output of a solar panel depends on where it's installed, inclination, temperature, elevation, and so on. The actual peak power is going to take weather and dirty panels into account.

1kw nameplate in Ireland (or the Netherlands) is never going to give you an instantaneous 1kw output -- you're going to be lucky to see 60% of that.

[misiek08]

But 60% of 25GW is less than 3GW? You need to take down more capacity than the buffer and power plants will disconnect from grid for fail-safe. Bringing grid up alone maybe will take days or few, but all the appliances out there will be down for weeks.. ClownStrike brought us pen-written boarding passes, glad we don’t install crapware on hospitals hardware

[preisschild]

No. You will definitely not get peak capacity even in the sahara. They got those numbers under perfect conditions in a laboratory, not under real circumstances.

[deanishe]

Solar panels don't work as well when they're hot, do they?