vinyloh no! think of the stock market!
This is idiotic. The fact is your electricity transmission system operator has to pay a lot of money to keep the grid stable at 50 or 60Hz or your electronics would fry. With wind and especially with solar power, the variable output is always pushing the frequency one way or another, and that creates a great need for costly balancing services.
People also don’t realize that too much power is just as bad as too little, worse in fact. There’s always useful power sinks: pumped hydro, batteries, thermal storage, but these are not infinite.
AeriStupid question but can we not like, make toggleable solar panels? Like if I Just pull the plug extracting power from a solar panel does it explode or break or something?
Not really. You can discharge into the ground, but for large installations even the ground has a limited (local) capacity.
I have no idea what i am talking about…
But what would happen if you pulled a black tarp over the panel? Could even be automatic like the blends on a building. And even partial.
That’s extremely expensive and not really scaleable.
You’re telling me a toggleable panel that flips when it needs to is too expensive? You’re already installing the panels. You’re already doing all that. The only difference is the material on the back side of the panel and of course some sort of crank and shaft to rotate it
Solar panels are very cheap, and any modification ramps up prices. No, really.
We just need a lot of panels to generate significant amounts of electricity, which would necessitate a large cover - which would get expensive on that scale.
In addition to what allero said, you seem to only be considering future installations rather than existing ones. Retrofitting existing equipment is massively more expensive than changing a design prior to building it.
Well of course I was thinking of future. That’s how you improve the future.
Could they not just break the circuit for the panel, and stop it feeding back into the mains?
Yeah. My understanding is that most large solar complexes don’t have this capability, at least not in any efficient automatic way, but most home solar systems do.
My understanding is that most large solar arrays don’t have this capability in any sort of automatic way, and at these levels of power it’s a bit more complicated than “just unplug it”.
This seems like a massive oversight on behalf of the park designers.
One of many issues caused by the assumption that solar would only ever be a minor part of the grid.
OK, so new instalation have a breaker switch.
They currently have breaker switches, they need something more granular and automated
uismost large solar arrays don’t have this capability in any sort of automatic way
Look at this “manual” unplugger:
and at these levels of power it’s a bit more complicated than “just unplug it”.
Unplug many.
“Everything is so fucking simple that I can easily figure out the solutions to giant societal problems with 15 minutes of googling” is the dumbest take I’ve heard all day. Granted it’s only 6am but still.
Maybe you’re not fucking Sun Tzu, Einstein and Jesus rolled in to one and there might be the occasional issue that’s slightly more complicated than your armchair quarterback solutions.
Christ you people piss me off.
societal
When did solar panels form society? Calm down your imagination.
You are saying that there is no way to disconnect solar panels from grid, which is obviously not true.
“Why are you so worried about this soccer game? Just kick the ball in the net”
Solar panels are easily disconnectable. Unlike conventional power plants it does not have spinning rust, that can walk away entire building.