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In several ancient cultures, the periodic dimming of the sun during daytime was thought to be the work of giant celestial beasts devouring it. As humanity gained a better understanding of the natural world, people understood that the phenomenon was actually the moon harmlessly passing between the Earth and sun, and blocking light from reaching us. Fear of the solar eclipse turned into curiosity and pleasure.
But some of that fear briefly returned in recent months. Those afflicted with the terrors of yore were Europe’s power grid managers. Instead of imagined heavenly predators or bad omens, the dread was triggered byimages of darkened photovoltaic cells. A partial eclipse that will have sweptover much of Europe for more than four hours on Friday morning could be thefirst test for the continent’s alternative energy-infused electricity system.
Europe’s solar power installations now total around 90gigawatts of capacity. Experts had predicted almost 34 gigawatts wouldgradually disappear from the system if Friday turned out to be a sunny day.
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Top: A lunar transit in from of the sun. Image credit: NASA. Above: People have been fascinated with eclipses for millennia. Above is an illustration of the moon blocking the sun from a 13th century manuscript. Image credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum
That still represents only a tiny fraction of totalinstalled capacity on the continent. The concern wasn’t about not having enoughpower, it was about what would happen when that volume of electricity left thesystem and then came rushing back in as the eclipse ended.
“Managing this eventon the world’s largest interconnected grid is an unprecedented challenge for European [transmission system operators],” officials with the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity wrote in a report. “Solar eclipses have happened before but with the increase of installed photovoltaic energy generation, the risk of an incident could be serious without appropriate countermeasures…”
Determined not to fail nature’s test, power grid operators set to work planning for the eclipse over the past year. Transmission system control rooms across Europe were tied together through Internet-based interfaces to coordinate any steps they needed to take to keep the system stable as solar power fluctuated. And, according to Phys.org, power producers put more workers on duty and bolstered their reserve capacity throughout the event to counter the potential for blackouts. French authorities, for example, boosted reserve capacity from 1,000 megawatts to 1,700 MW.
Pierpaolo Mazza, the general manager of GE’s Distributed Power business in the region, said his customers have long realized that power sources like the sun come with a different set of challenges from fossil fuels.
“Renewable energy resources such as wind and sun have, without doubt, a low environmental impact, but they are not always available,” he said. “With the accelerating growth of renewable installations, a higher demand for fast-starting, flexible power generation is required. Reliable energy supply, network stability and increasing efficiency are playing an ever-increasing role.”
Components that add flexibility into Europe’s electricity system, like flexible gas turbines that can ramp up fro zero to 1,000 megawatts in 10 minutes and gas engines, will help keep the lights on. Says Mazza: “Blackouts should be something from the past.”
