17 votes

The US will lose more than thirty gigawatts of solar energy during the total eclipse — roughly the output of thirty nuclear reactors — as sunlight is blocked during prime generating hours

Posted by ignorabimus
Tags: energy.renewable, usa, eclipses.solar, solar power, author.will wade, source.bloomberg, paywall
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-08/eclipse-to-cut-us-solar-by-30-gigawatts-as-moon-shades-panels

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Title
Bloomberg
Word count
77 words

8 comments

  1. [3]
    FriendlyGnome
    Link
    This (brief) article was even worse than I feared it would be. I was hoping for some honestly interesting information about the effects of the eclipse on energy generation, but all I see is...

    This (brief) article was even worse than I feared it would be. I was hoping for some honestly interesting information about the effects of the eclipse on energy generation, but all I see is clickbait/fearmongering/disinformation/illiteracy

    • Conflating power with energy, and treating power as if it is something to be "lost," as if power could be collected in a basket (there is certainly a better word for this, I can't conjure it currently)
    • Adding this "lost" power across distinct geographies, with unspecified durations
    • Somehow treating three relatively small power generation jurisdictions as if they are close enough to "the US" when many more are also experiencing the eclipse

    This headline is just as useful, accurate, inane, and misleading: "US will lose more than 10 petawatts of solar power tonight"

    Instead, I would have been interested to see:

    • How much energy (not power) was lost due to the eclipse?
    • What was the peak power disruption in a jurisdiction of interest, as a proportion of total power generation
    • How long did it last
    • What the impacts and mitigations were
    49 votes
    1. vord
      Link Parent
      Well, for me personally, for the panels I can get data on (the one inverter is not reporting correctly....): Today, based on the weather, between 2 PM and 4PM I would have expected to generate...

      Well, for me personally, for the panels I can get data on (the one inverter is not reporting correctly....):

      Today, based on the weather, between 2 PM and 4PM I would have expected to generate around 5.5kwh. I was in roughly a 90% coverage area. With the eclipse, I only saw a hair under 3kwh. About a 45% loss over the course of 2 hours.

      Significant, but not really any moreso than the cloud cover that followed....

      17 votes
    2. Pretzilla
      Link Parent
      Never any reason to not freak out

      Never any reason to not freak out

  2. [3]
    SteeeveTheSteve
    Link
    Umm, I need a banana for scale please. That's a large area, is 30GW a lot compared to a day's normal output? 🤔 What was yesterday's output? How much is lost on a cloudy day or due to a storm...

    Umm, I need a banana for scale please.

    That's a large area, is 30GW a lot compared to a day's normal output? 🤔 What was yesterday's output? How much is lost on a cloudy day or due to a storm sweeping across the country? Does any go unused that could have been used?

    When I see such an important bit of info omitted, it makes me think they left out scale on purpose. "They dumped a barrel worth of bleach off their boat" just doesn't have the same ring when it's followed by "in the middle of the pacific ocean".

    12 votes
    1. [2]
      ChingShih
      Link Parent
      Yeah I was curious about that, too. The U.S. EIA projected 163 billion kWh of solar power generation in 2023, but that's kWh and not KW ... the article mentions KW. 1 Watt = 1 joule per second; 1...

      Yeah I was curious about that, too. The U.S. EIA projected 163 billion kWh of solar power generation in 2023, but that's kWh and not KW ... the article mentions KW.

      1 Watt = 1 joule per second; 1 kilowatt-hour = 3.6 kilojoules over 1 hour (3600 joules / 3600 seconds). The loss of 30 gigajoules per second, for the equivalent of one second (the measurement they picked), sounds like a blip. The loss of 30 GWh would be substantially more but ... not the end of the world? We're still here? Power companies plan for spikes in usage, including sporting events.

      I wonder if Bloomberg knows or cares about the difference. I also wonder if they run articles about how many kWh are lost when hurricanes threaten the Gulf.

      10 votes
      1. SteeeveTheSteve
        Link Parent
        Does that mean 30 GW is something like 8.3 MWh? 😬 I think that's less than a Superbowl stadium.

        Does that mean 30 GW is something like 8.3 MWh? 😬 I think that's less than a Superbowl stadium.

        2 votes
  3. BeanBurrito
    Link
    On the POSITIVE side The U.S. generates the equivalent of 30 nuclear reactors with solar energy!

    On the POSITIVE side

    The U.S. generates the equivalent of 30 nuclear reactors with solar energy!

    6 votes