Peter Amstutz

@sbi This is super interesting. My town had a municipal electric service with a strong commitment to providing renewable power and several existing solar installations, and I was just reading an article about how they are proposing to build battery banks to absorb excess solar production, and this thread explains some of the reasons why very well. Thanks!

@sbi Here's the quote from the municipal power CTO about why they we need batteries: "if we go above a certain threshold with solar, when we don't have enough load, current power power protection devices will not work correctly, that can lead to damage to the grid" I don't know what threshold that becomes a problem but I found a chart that says the town gets about 6% of electricity from solar and had about 12 MW installed in 2022, with a strong political mandate to be carbon free by 2030.

@sbi I think I'm conflating two numbers, the 6% is probably year-round total contribution from solar, but there is 12 MW solar installed out of ~30-40 MW of demand (this is just a guess based on ~9000 households and businesses) so solar contribution is presumably much higher on sunny summer days, which as I understand from your thread, these primary control issues start to become significant.