What Happens to Solar Power in an Eclipse? We’ll Find Out Monday
“An eclipse is obviously not something we see every day,
but this is going to be a good exercise for us,” said Randy Wheeless, a spokesman for Duke Energy, which expects solar capacity in North Carolina to dip from 2,500 megawatts to just 200 on Monday afternoon, affecting roughly 3 percent of electricity generation in the state.
Creating a fully regional energy market would require further negotiations between states,
but Mr. Schmitt sees the eclipse as a way to “dip our toes in the water and see what that looks like.”
California also makes heavy use of pumped hydroelectric storage, in which surplus electricity during the day is used to pump water up a hill.
“There’s no doubt more solar power is going to come onto the grid in the future, and
that does increase the challenge of balancing the grid even on days when there’s not an eclipse.”
Nowhere is this challenge more stark than in California, home to nearly half the nation’s photovoltaic panels.
As the eclipse carves a long shadow over California on Monday morning, it is expected to knock offline more than 5,600 megawatts’ worth of solar panels at its peak — a big chunk of the 19,000 megawatts of solar power
that currently provide one-tenth of the state’s electricity.