09-10-2016, 08:19 PM
Kapoho Joe asked - "Aside from impacting profit, what is the reason Helco gives for instituting a cap on solar?"
Seep responded - "Grid stability , which is a legitimate concern- if you have people generating power when and where you don't need it and it's not constant it raises hell with every other part of the system"
A few years ago I noticed that power outages or "glitches" were increasing quite dramatically at UKIRT and sent out a notice to other observatories. They responded and said they were seeing the same thing. After this, the observatories contacted HELCO and asked them to explain what was happening. Their response was that with so many people switching to solar power, the grid had become unstable as they couldn't predict when people would be switching off or onto the grid each day.
I'll be happy to provide the plot, it's quite dramatic, although I gave up keeping track a couple of years ago as the number of "glitches" became so frequent it was taking up too much of my time keeping track of them.
Please don't think I'm defending HELCO, I'm sure the technology exists to prevent this sort of thing and I suspect the problem is a combination of a number of things, including aging infrastructure, but their excuse was an unstable grid caused by solar power users.
Seep responded - "Grid stability , which is a legitimate concern- if you have people generating power when and where you don't need it and it's not constant it raises hell with every other part of the system"
A few years ago I noticed that power outages or "glitches" were increasing quite dramatically at UKIRT and sent out a notice to other observatories. They responded and said they were seeing the same thing. After this, the observatories contacted HELCO and asked them to explain what was happening. Their response was that with so many people switching to solar power, the grid had become unstable as they couldn't predict when people would be switching off or onto the grid each day.
I'll be happy to provide the plot, it's quite dramatic, although I gave up keeping track a couple of years ago as the number of "glitches" became so frequent it was taking up too much of my time keeping track of them.
Please don't think I'm defending HELCO, I'm sure the technology exists to prevent this sort of thing and I suspect the problem is a combination of a number of things, including aging infrastructure, but their excuse was an unstable grid caused by solar power users.