Managing the grid during a solar eclipse

[pleppik]

Well, the eclipse came and went, and there was evidently more than adequate power on standby. I found this article about how the European grid operators managed.

Hoping that in six months or so we'll see a more technical article somewhere detailing the preparations and how it all played out in real time. Should make interesting reading.

[pleppik]

Clouds and other weather inputs are unpredictable and in addition, have much more impact on grid loading or load stability than any predictable event can ever have.

What were you thinking ?

I think you misread what I wrote. I never said solar was 100% predictable or that clouds are unimportant. Instead, I was (sarcastically) making the point that any power plant can fail unpredictably, so it's necessary to have spinning reserves whether your power is coming from solar, nuclear, coal, hydro, or millions of hamsters on exercise wheels.

[J.P.M.]

I agree a cloud can Black Out a Region or Island. They got what they asked for. Thus is the reason to have hot standby capacity with conventional generation. All the warnings about being to reliant on solar and the added cost has now started to come home and roost. Scientist and engineers knew, politicians and advocates did not want to hear it or let anyone else know it. Not going to be a problem in the USA mainland as it all comes to a halt end of 2016 and solar still will contribute nothing less than 1%. Of the Renewable only hydro and wind make any significant contribution and have a profit margins. Hydro is done in the USA as no more land or water left to work with. Wind has some room to grow.

I believe there are still some small and/or low head hydro potential left in the U.S., but probably not economically as viable as CH4 for small or peaker plants, if viable at all.

After the CA IOU POCO's reach their 5% caps and new NEM applications either slow down or stop, peak generating cap. from distributed solar may get to 5% or greater of the total during mid afternoons on sunny, cool days in April and May.

[Sunking]

Although I can tell you in some places the % of PV to Utility generation is a lot higher than 1% and they do feel the affect should a large array suddenly drop out. The POCO can survive but it plays havoc with the local power plant doing the tap dance to maintain a stable V & F for their customers.

I agree a cloud can Black Out a Region or Island. They got what they asked for. Thus is the reason to have hot standby capacity with conventional generation. All the warnings about being to reliant on solar and the added cost has now started to come home and roost. Scientist and engineers knew, politicians and advocates did not want to hear it or let anyone else know it. Not going to be a problem in the USA mainland as it all comes to a halt end of 2016 and solar still will contribute nothing less than 1%. Of the Renewable only hydro and wind make any significant contribution and have a profit margins. Hydro is done in the USA as no more land or water left to work with. Wind has some room to grow.

[SunEagle]

Solar makes less than 1% of US generation. It can all fall of the face of the earth at the same time and the utilities would never fill a thing. The generation is already there and running.

I agree with you if you look at solar power generation of the US then the sudden loss of PV would not affect the Utilities.

Although I can tell you in some places the % of PV to Utility generation is a lot higher than 1% and they do feel the affect should a large array suddenly drop out. The POCO can survive but it plays havoc with the local power plant doing the tap dance to maintain a stable V & F for their customers.

[Sunking]

Thanks for reminding us that conventional power plants never go offline, and if they do it's always perfectly predictable. I had forgotten that.

Solar makes less than 1% of US generation. It can all fall of the face of the earth at the same time and the utilities would never fill a thing. The generation is already there and running.

[SunEagle]

Thanks for reminding us that conventional power plants never go offline, and if they do it's always perfectly predictable. I had forgotten that.

Something that is not predictable but has happened many many times is that solar arrays (off all sizes) can suddenly go off line because of the safety set-points in the Inverter software being triggered.

If the voltage, frequency, phase shift or transients on the Grid get too high or low or somehow out of the normal the Inverter will disconnect for a minimum of 5 minutes. After that it will test the Grid to see if all is well before it reconnects back to it.

Can you imagine what a 10MW generating system just stops working for 5 minutes and then after the Utility has scrambled to fill in the loss of power that 10MW come back on line again. This happens all the time for any solar pv array that is connected to a less than stable Utility grid.

Heck predicting clouds would be easy compared to this type of issue.

[J.P.M.]

Thanks for reminding us that conventional power plants never go offline, and if they do it's always perfectly predictable. I had forgotten that.

Clouds and other weather inputs are unpredictable and in addition, have much more impact on grid loading or load stability than any predictable event can ever have.

What were you thinking ?

[pleppik]

What a bunch of crap about nothing no one gives a rats ass about. That is why solar is a complete waste of money in public works, you have to have conventional power generation waiting in hot standby to go on line at a moments notice. They are not offsetting any emissions. just pissing a bunch of money and nothing gained.

Europe spends half a year under cloud cover with no solar production. Who gives a Rats Ass about a short duration 1 day event.

Thanks for reminding us that conventional power plants never go offline, and if they do it's always perfectly predictable. I had forgotten that.

[donald]

Man has understood th eeclpse cycles for eons and already knows when the will occur for the next 1000 years and past 3000 years. But not CLOUDS. Then there is that little thing called night to deal with.

So you are saying I can stop the human sacrifices?

[Sunking]

I find this interesting, but it's certainly esoteric.

Hopefully some day solar eclipses will be understood and predicted, so that all these power plants will not have to remain on hot standby indefinitely. Maybe too very short term weather predictions will be know to grid operators.

Man has understood th eeclpse cycles for eons and already knows when the will occur for the next 1000 years and past 3000 years. But not CLOUDS. Then there is that little thing called night to deal with.

[donald]

I find this interesting, but it's certainly esoteric.

Hopefully some day solar eclipses will be understood and predicted, so that all these power plants will not have to remain on hot standby indefinitely. Maybe too very short term weather predictions will be know to grid operators.

[Sunking]

What a bunch of crap about nothing no one gives a rats ass about. That is why solar is a complete waste of money in public works, you have to have conventional power generation waiting in hot standby to go on line at a moments notice. They are not offsetting any emissions. just pissing a bunch of money and nothing gained.

Europe spends half a year under cloud cover with no solar production. Who gives a Rats Ass about a short duration 1 day event.

[pleppik]

There's going to be a solar eclipse in Europe in a few weeks, and the European grid operators recently published an analysis of the expected impact on the power grid. You can download it here, and it's surprisingly readable for a technical paper.

A couple interesting (to me) takeaways:

• Depending on the weather, Europe could lose as much as 30GW of generation on the European grid during the eclipse. Currently, Europe has about 90GW of PV on the grid.
• In the UK, where there was an eclipse in 1999, power demand went down substantially during the eclipse. Based on the 1999 UK experience, the analysis suggests that the change in demand could to be faster than the change in production.