A Problem Nobody Anticipated – Excess Solar Energy

[nsaspook]

No, the OP was not complaining about Australia. The OP (that would be me) shared an article on an unintended consequence of an apparent solar power win – 100% powering of the grid by home solar installations. Yes, this happened in Australia, but it could happen anywhere as adoption of alternative power sources increases. The sooner we plan for this eventuality and devise methods to solve the control and backup reserve issues, the better.

This is nothing new in the USA. We have excess RE energy here most years.

BPA Stops Wind Power Generation For The First Time In 4 Years

Too much water and too much wind are a bad combination for power suppliers. Now, officials are forcing wind farms to shut down for the first time in four years. This year, there's more to the story.

www.opb.org

Northwest rivers are running high as all that winter snowpack melts into spring runoff.

And that means the region is producing too much of a good thing: carbon-free, renewable energy in the form of both dam-generated hydropower along with electricity from spinning wind-farm turbines.

That's prompted the federal government to take an action it avoided during the last four years of drought conditions: shutting down wind power.

That's something the Bonneville Power Administration did each spring from 2010 to 2012, before more recent drought conditions kept rivers running so low that there was plenty of capacity on the power grid for all the electricity that Northwest wind farms could generate.

But there's one big difference between this spring and the region's pre-drought years: California's increasing supply of solar power.

Electricity suppliers in the Northwest used to sell a lot of their carbon-free energy from wind and hydroelectric dams to California to help it meet its renewable energy goals. But now, with more solar on the grid, California's not buying as much of the Northwest's surplus.

 

[Visitor]

I didn't know we had that problem in the Pacific NW (Puget Sound native). Wind farms are a different case though. The utilities/BPA have ways to regulate the power delivered by them. Home solar arrays currently don't have that regulation ability. The only way not to accept power from them is to cut them off of the grid, which probably blacks out the neighborhood, or a worse situation, leaves a section of grid free floating, with no mechanism to control it or reconnect it.

 

[gophert]

Yes, in the US. The OP was complaining about Australia - I don't know the power plant subsidy scams/solar feed-in scams there. Schemes/scams? I think I've heard it both ways.

No, the OP was not complaining about Australia. The OP (that would be me) shared an article on an unintended consequence of an apparent solar power win – 100% powering of the grid by home solar installations. Yes, this happened in Australia, but it could happen anywhere as adoption of alternative power sources increases. The sooner we plan for this eventuality and devise methods to solve the control and backup reserve issues, the better.

Yes, correction: I should have said, "the OP is complaining that he is accused of complaining..."
... and I should have said, "the some active poster is complaining about Austrailia..."

 

[Pommie]

I know for a fact that my inverter shuts down if the grid goes over voltage and slowly decreases the amount it is feeding in as the grid voltage approaches that point.

Did everyone skip this from Terry who actually lives in South Australia? There is a way to control individual panels and it appears that it's been implemented. I guess the article is just nonsense journalism as usual.

Mike.

 

[Visitor]

Yes, correction: I should have said, "the OP is complaining that he is accused of complaining..."
... and I should have said, "the some active poster is complaining about Austrailia..."

I really have to say this, and I know many will agree. It is so pleasant when you STFU for weeks at a time.