{"id":41249,"date":"2020-02-12T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=41249"},"modified":"2020-02-12T06:47:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T06:47:09","slug":"one-million-solar-panels-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2020\/02\/12\/one-million-solar-panels-knew\/","title":{"rendered":"One million solar panels! If only we knew where they were…"},"content":{"rendered":"

How much solar energy is being pumped into the electricity grid right now? No-one knows! Not even the government, nor even the operators of the electricity grid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UK ranks seventh in the world in installed solar capacity – behind China, US, Japan, Germany, India and Italy, according to the International Energy Agency\u2019s 2018 data.<\/p>\n

Official UK figures tell us there are now over one million installations of solar photovoltaic (solar \u201cPV\u201d) panels. On people’s homes, on businesses, in community-owned projects.<\/p>\n

They generate energy for their owners, but they can also generate excess electricity which is deposited into the National Grid network for others to use. Fantastic.<\/p>\n

Exactly how much electricity, you might ask? No-one knows \u2013 most electricity grids were designed in the previous century when there was no need to measure “reverse flow”, meaning electricity coming back into the grid from your home.<\/p>\n

This has consequences for the climate. In the absence of exact measurement\/prediction of solar energy input, fossil-powered generators need to be kept running, inefficiently, so they can take the strain when the network is underpowered.<\/p>\n

UK climate diplomacy \u2018already happening\u2019<\/strong> for Cop26 despite leadership vacuum<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So even if we were getting 100% of our power from renewable energy, we would still need to keep a few gas generators running but turned down, in case clouds happen to drift over many of our solar panels all at once.<\/p>\n

If we could measure the solar contribution – or even better, if we could forecast it just four hours in advance – we could have much less fossil fuel burning as a backup. Forecasting for the present or a very short time ahead like this is sometimes called “nowcasting”.<\/p>\n

It could save approximately 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in the UK alone. Rolled out worldwide, it could save on the order of a hundred million tonnes per year by 2030.<\/p>\n

Here’s an animation which illustrates the rhythm of solar generation, and how dramatically it is affected by cloud.<\/p>\n

The video covers June 2019, and as well as the clouds you can see coloured dots, each one representing a PV installation which has made public what it\u2019s generating. When a dot is bright white\/yellow, it’s outputting close to its peak capacity.<\/p>\n