Posted on 03/01/2015 12:12:35 PM PST by Libloather
On the morning of March 20, 2015, a solar eclipse will pass over all of Europe, visible from Turkey to Greenland. A decade ago, that probably wouldn't have mattered to anyone except people who love astronomy (and all the schoolchildren building pinhole cameras to observe the sun.) But now, three percent of Europe's electricity grid comes from solar power, making the March event a proving ground for this renewable energy technology.
In the span of two hours, 35,000 megawatts of electricity will fade from the grid, and then return. To put that in perspective, a typical coal plant in the United States generates about 600 megawatts. The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) calls the eclipse an "unprecedented test for Europe's electricity system."
“It will have a cascading effect,” ENTSO-E spokesperson Claire Camus told the Financial Times. “It’s definitely going to be a challenge for control rooms.”
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
If a scheduled 3% or less shutdown of units is noticed or measured by the customer in any way, dispatchers need to be fired.
No way the grid should have any issues at all. They already know what time they need to have additional non-solar units online.
Well, if they fail this test then they WILL NOT HAVE A CHANCE at making it through nightfall, which, unfortunately for them, comes every 24 hours or so.
What is cheaper and easier?
Balancing the grid by adding non-solar units or having the lesser developed countries suffer a little inconvenience?
The grid is already equiped to operate at night and cloudy days.
This is a pretend issue, made up in the author’s mind.
I heat with gas and wood. As primitive as it is it doesn’t seem to be affected by eclipses.
The path of Total eclipse (100% obscuration) runs completely in the Northeast Atlantic, with the maximum duration at less than 3 minutes. The partial phases could last for a few hours at any one spot, however most of Europe will never be fully in the dark (~80% coverage, max) and the Sun’s angle at this time of year is very shallow anyway.
I’d have see some hard numbers of the estimated power loss, but something doesn’t ring true…
This seems like a stupid story, seeing as they already go dark every single day for hours on end.
If they are simply saying that you need to make sure your computer programs took into account a “nighttime” event at abnormal hours, that doesn’t seem like much work.
You use the inverters to power really large LED light panels, which you can shine on your solar panels to generate electricity when the sun is blocked.
Yes, I am kidding.
Not much, but tomorrow when it is partly cloudy and in the 40’s it will be a lot better. DC and other cities need the most electric power during air conditioning season, and DC is generally quite sunny then. We will always need a mix of power sources, but neglecting to make use of free sunshine and wind is not logical. This will be an interesting test of grid changeover capacity.
Tell that to the railroad who were subsidized with so much free land along their original rights-of-way, or the oil companies who have been getting tax breaks for 100 years. Is there a good reason why solar and wind should not get similar consideration, or why oil shouldn’t have to stop sucking tit? Do we believe in fairness here?
BS. The oil companies pay lease fees and royalties to the federal and some state governments. There are no special tax breaks, only the ones other companies get for depreciation and depletion. The problem is not the tax breaks, but the fact that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Do we believe in fairness here?
No, take your liberal crap elsewhere.
Except when it is not. The power company will need people to sign up to have their A/C turned off when there are clouds, or the power company will need spinning reserve to avoid blackouts.
Not even the most rabid pro renewable energy supporters have been suggesting that renewables can carry the whole load except in small scale, isolated cases like survivalists. Currently, however, it is now common for cities with electric companies required to have a renewable component to only be using 5 or 6 percent renewables including also hydro, biomass and geothermal (in volcano country), in addition to solar and wind. Surely, we can do better than that. Why waste money importing oil and/or burning up our carbon based resources that our posterity will need for important things like plastics and industrial chemicals? We could use so much more of our own wind and sun to save our resources and money.
Required by whom? People who know power? Or politicians. I go to every public meeting of my nonprofit electric power company and one of their number one goals is figuring out how to work poltically correct electrons into the grid without large price hikes or reduced reliability.
Surely, we can do better than that
Surely my power company's supplier, the nonprofit Old Dominion Electric Cooperative should be able to use its relatively new expensive coal plant for its engineered life. But the politicians have other plans.
We could use so much more of our own wind and sun to save our resources and money.
There is so much to learn about power. If you are in a cooperative like I am they will gladly explain it to anyone. They are not stupid people and their goal is very simple, get reliable power to their members at the lowest cost. The main use may be comfort which might be trimmed or optimized for cost. For example I signed up to have the power company turn off my A/C when they run out of power. They already shut off power to businesses during those times. They have no similar plan for winter, and I do not have electric heat anyway.
One more anecdote, back in January 1994 northern Virginia ran out of power and lots of my fellow apartment dwellers were forced out by cold and flooding. To propose unreliable power under those circumstances is criminal.
Come on, no need to flip out for a few minutes without solar power, has Europe really gone tinfoil hat nutty? Don’t they have batteries connected to the solar power, this is worse than telling me to flip out about measles killing us all!
Musk is a rent seeker.
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To some extent, but he also produces commercially successful products that people actually want. Much more so than any other rent seeker in history probably.
Does it get dark at night in Europe? They could have “tested” the system last night.
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They have to deal with a lengthy eclipse every day, don’t they?
actually super late at night.. even 9pm during summer time still the sun is up :)
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