U.S. power system operators are planning for a drop in solar generation Monday as darkness covers a swath of the United States.
Monday’s total solar eclipse will offer U.S. power grid operators a chance to help answer a pressing question: What happens to a solar-rich grid when there’s suddenly no sunlight?
Grid planners aren’t expecting power shortages because of the eclipse, when the moon will block the sun and create a path of total darkness running from Texas to Maine. Operators contacted by E&E News say they’ve been preparing for months and will have ample supply to cover any lost solar generation.
Those losses could be significant. In Texas — where eclipse coverage will range from 81 percent to full totality — the state’s main grid operator could lose more than 90 percent of its solar capacity, enough to power at least 2.8 million homes. Even areas thousands of miles away from the path of total eclipse coverage could see solar generation cut in half.
The predictability of the eclipse makes it a valuable “test run” for how the grid handles other sun-blocking events like lengthy storms or wildfire smoke plumes, said Barry Mather, chief engineer for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“The idea is not that this is a dangerous event, but for us, it’s about learning how we can operate the grid more flexibly so we can handle events that aren’t as predictable,” said Mather. “In the future, you might see something that has the same effect as an eclipse, but you may only know about it a day ahead of time.”
Mather is part of a team at NREL — a national lab for the Department of Energy — that will be studying the grid’s response to the eclipse, including gathering real-time information as the shadow moves across the country.
Monday’s eclipse is expected to be a dramatic, countrywide event.
According to NASA, 99 percent of people in the United States will be able to see a partial or total eclipse from their home, including in parts of Alaska and Hawaii. Totality will differ based on location, lasting as long as 4 minutes and 26 seconds in the center of the eclipse’s path in Texas and more than 4 minutes as far north as Indiana. The sun could be partially obscured for hours, although the length depends on proximity to the path of totality.
The country’s last total solar eclipse — which traveled from coast to coast in August 2017 — is estimated to have cut between 4,000 and 6,500 megawatts of utility-scale solar from the grid at its peak, according to a report from NREL. That event did not result in any major U.S. power outages.
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