I wonder how much solar power solar cells put out on a cloudy day when sleet and freezing rain are falling on them an coating all the surfaces in 1/4 inch of ice; such as today here in Wash DC?
A scheduled shutdown of 3% is hardly any challenge at all.
Utilities deal with larger unscheduled shutdowns on a regular basis.
This is a story trying to pretend there is a crisis.
Does it get dark at night in Europe? They could have “tested” the system last night.
There have been some interesting developments in solar technology over the last few years.
One in particular is the development of a battery back-up.
Elon Musk, who is part of SolarCity is building a massive manufacturing plant to produce these batteries.
I understand the inherent problems of solar and the affects it has on balancing the grid. Having a battery back-up system goes a long way to solve some of these issues.
Ummmm ... they don’t have clouds over there?! ... LOL ...
Well, how do they handle night?
The only place the eclipse will be total is in Spitzbergen, where there are no solar power plants. Percent totality is mostly in the low double digits. No problem.
I once talked with a scientist who went to Mexico some years ago to follow an eclipse best seen from there.
He said that as it got dark, all the night bugs and animals came out while the day types shut down. He said that even though he is a modern man with all the knowledge that goes with it, he still had a sudden surge of fear when everything went dark. He then realized just how much ancient man would be stricken with terror.
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.
I heat with gas and wood. As primitive as it is it doesn’t seem to be affected by eclipses.
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.
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!