
The US is using so much solar power it'll have to prepare for the August eclipse - obi1kenobi
https://qz.com/973684/california-will-lose-enough-solar-energy-to-power-los-angeles-during-the-eclipse-on-aug-21/
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edent
This occurred a few years ago in Europe - I graphed what happened with my
solar panels.

[https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/03/the-eclipses-effect-on-
sola...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/03/the-eclipses-effect-on-solar-power/)

For UK / Europe the effect was broadly similar to normal cloud cover.
Something that California rarely experiences ;-)

An eclipse is more predictable than the weather - so other sources of energy
can be used to offset any disruption.

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davedx
Yup! Grid operators will have this planned in well ahead of the date.

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Caveman_Coder
Yes indeed, we are mandated by NERC to have reserved for such events...it
won't be an issue at all.

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ComputerGuru
QZ has become a spam and advertising cesspool. I couldn't find the story the
first two times I tried until I realized by default it only shows ads and
garbage until you click the small "show story" button.

~~~
pwg
I clicked over to the linked site using Firefox running NoScript in default
deny JS mode.

The whole text of the article appeared, ready to read. Granted it is a very
short article, but it appeared just fine.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Us NoScripters experience a different Internet which many surprisingly call
intolerable.

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wdick
This happend a couple years ago in Germany. The actual challenge for the local
utility company (one of the biggest 4) was not to compensate the missing
energy output from solar, but in calculating the optimal backup energy plan to
buy on the future/spot market. If you buy too much or not enough upfront, it
just gets expensive. But the whole problem is keeping the cost low. Not a
black out.

Friend of mine was in the dev-team for the spot trading software. (Sorry for
my english)

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crusso
You know, darkness isn't something that just happens every day... wait...

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jpitz
This is during peak air conditioning load, and air conditioning is used most
when when... wait... the sun is out.

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luckydude
Yeah but this article is silly. Solar isn't a given, you can have a cloudy
day. Or days. So the grid already has to be prepared to deal with this.

It's a known problem, happens every night. The company that solves storage in
a meaningful way is gonna get rich. By meaningful I mean at scale and
portable. I know you can pump water up to a reservoir and let it back out to
generate power but that's not portable. Anyone know if someone has an answer
other than Musk's powerwall (which is kinda cool in that it is the definition
of portable, completely distributed, but also sort of limited).

Seems like a fun problem to work on.

~~~
jpitz
No, seriously, during summer, peak residential and commercial load correlates
with solar heating. Unless you have residential load-shedding installed in
your footprint, coordinating with industrial loads is your best bet to reduce
peak demand.

The article isn't silly.

It's a known problem, but utilities and operators move at a glacial pace due
to their scale and regulatory issues. This can make it difficult for startups
to get sales and stay afloat.

Lots of people are trying to get rich in this space and it turns out to be a
non-trivial set of problems.

And yes, it is a fun problem to work on. I would encourage anyone who is
interested to get into the storage / smart grid management space.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
It's not really a problem at all...the WECC utility companies have ample
reserves, CA will just buy MW from APS, BPA, and PGE on the EIM (run by
CAISO)...I'm not sure how this process is affected by utility company and
operator "pace" in the slightest, in fact the ability to buy energy and
transfer it from one BA to another happens every second...how would you
envision this industry being "disrupted"?

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luckydude
So the problem that I (and I think others) see is a time where solar is
providing more than 50% of our power. Or 100% of our power if that makes it
more clear.

Then where do you pick up the slack?

Maybe your point is that we get it long distance from places that are not
covered in clouds?

~~~
Caveman_Coder
That's the whole point of an energy market and a grid system...if Cali can't
cover their own energy needs (which they don't do already btw), they'll
purchase however many MWs are needed from AZ, OR, WA, NV, or UT

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trvlngwlbry
I love the GIF in the article and how it was copyrighted in 2000 about an
event that would happen in 2017. I'm a reader/follower of N. N. Taleb and
agree with him about how difficult it is to predict future events. And
meanwhile, the conditions in space and the laws of physics allow for a model
like this to be made with what seems to be a lot of precision. Can anyone
speak to how accurate/precise that GIF model _could've been_ in 2000?

~~~
dekhn
The ability to predict the locations of celestial objects to high accuracy is
one of the pinnacles of modern science. The approach, called "ephemeris", is
pretty straightforward- the entire solar system, with all of its components,
is modelled using straightforward physics and math (Newton's law, with some
relativistic corrections). We can accurately predict the location of all major
celestial objects to hundreds of years in the future (barring some unknown
external influence).

Every single time we send probes to other planets and they collect more data
(such as the non-spherical shape of a planet or moon), that data is
incorporated into the ephemeris calculations and they become that much more
accurate.

Now, were a rare, unpredictable event to occur- say, a rogue star entering the
solar system with low albedo so we couldn't see it coming- that would
introduce a change in the dynamics of the system that we couldn't easily
predict. it;s not exactly a "black swan" (to use taleb's nomenclature) because
we know rogue stars exist.

The predictions aren't perfectly accurate. We don't have total knowledge of
every element in the solar system (tiny asteroids affect the motion of the
sun, in a very long term way) so the predictions eventually fall off in
accuracy.

It's still a long term discussion whether the solar system is a truly chaotic
system, but we'll leave that to JPL and Minsky.

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Tepix
I think this can be handled with a little of preparation just like it was
handled elsewhere in the past.

If you look at the chart in the PDF, at the point of maximum impact the net
load will be 23.5GW instead of 16.5GW

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corradio
We're tracking live electricity generation from solar in the US here:
[https://www.electricitymap.org](https://www.electricitymap.org) Not sure we
will be able to see the effect talked about here though.

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snowwindwaves
Good thing they have 6000MW of dispatchable generation they can crank up when
they need it. I wonder how much spare capacity they have and how much the
people that own it get paid to have it on standby.

~~~
Caveman_Coder
CAISO will do it's job and CA residents won't notice a thing...APS, BPA, and
PAGE will make a good profit that day...utility planners/schedulers will
minimize line work (especially on the BES), and everything will be normal

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brlewis
The article doesn't mention a decrease in demand from air conditioning. Has
that been factored in?

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yathern
Are you implying that people will turn off their air conditioners for the
brief <5 minutes of darkness? I really doubt this.

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glitcher
In a very near total solar eclipse in I believe the summer of 1991, it was a
blistering hot day in Arizona and during the eclipse the temperature dropped
substantially. I don't know the numbers, but I remember being surprised at how
nice and comfortable the temperature drop was, which lasted for much longer
than 5 minutes.

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mark-r
How much of a lag was there between the eclipse itself and the drop in
temperature? Even if the drop is immediate I don't expect the thermostats to
turn off right away, as it will take some time for the cold to migrate into
buildings.

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agumonkey
Eclipse for some, bright day for others.

\-- Elon Musk

