And this is why reliance on solar power is an expensive pipe dream. It’s all about the battery.
The organisation said it had been planning for months so that suppliers across Europe provide more energy from other power stations during the hours that solar energy supplies are hit. Patrick Graichen, executive director of Agora Energiewende, a renewable energy think-tank in Berlin, said such events might become problematic in the future as more solar farms are built.
Read: We have to have sufficient nuke,coal and gas backup power, at all times.
Via, maz2
He told the Financial Times: “In a way March 20 is a glimpse into the future of our power systems.”
BINGO
Well, the solar eclipse is absolutely predictable. Down to the second. That’s eminently not why solar power is ill-suited as a prime mover for the grid. It’s the fact that it’s horribly expensive, horribly inefficient, and subject to the largely unpredictable effects of weather that makes it such a poor choice.
Here’s a thought experiment for you: imagine a world in which nuclear reactors worked every bit as well as they do now, except that for some arcane metaphysical reason, that nuclear fission would just plain stop during a transit of Mercury? Would they stop using nuclear simply because at rare, but eminently predictable intervals, the power plants would all take a brief vacation? Or would they simply say, “we can deal with this”, and provide backup power for truly essential services, and tell the rest of the power users to avoid starting anything serious for those predictable outages? After all, it really wouldn’t be much different than those rare outages we have now, where parts of the grid have to be shut down for repairs.
During the solar eclipse, these esteemed geniuses might do what they do every night. Start stoking coal into the already lit boilers.
Instead of standby wouldnt it be easier and cheaper to just use coal, nuclear and gas?
It’s the sun, son.
(good work on the website overhaul, much snappier now)
Build more hydro dams. Build solar/wind power gen next to them. Use intermittent solar/wind to pump water back above dam.
Repeat.
“Instead of standby wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just use coal, nuclear and gas?”
Damn fjord. Get with the pogr…er…program. Just because Spain can run their solar farms at NIGHT, using generator back-up, doesn’t mean it is a scam> The gorbul said so! Notice no country crow’s about their average IQ of grade 12’s anymore? Guess it doesn’t go into negative numbers below shoe size.
“such events might become problematic in the future as more solar farms are built”
YES! No need to analyze it as a critical System. 10,000 little turds are infinitely more problematic than 100 little turds.
The eclipse event may last for two hours but in any given location totality is fleeting.
However, in this case I applaud the leftie-eco cohort for their delightful ignorance.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Seth’s at it again:
https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-witness-carbon-dioxide-trapping-heat-air-180305626.html