What Happens to Solar Power in an Eclipse? We’ll Find Out Monday<br />“An eclipse is obviously not something we see every day,<br />but this is going to be a good exercise for us,” said Randy Wheeless, a spokesman for Duke Energy, which expects solar capacity in North Carolina to dip from 2,500 megawatts to just 200 on Monday afternoon, affecting roughly 3 percent of electricity generation in the state.<br />Creating a fully regional energy market would require further negotiations between states,<br />but Mr. Schmitt sees the eclipse as a way to “dip our toes in the water and see what that looks like.”<br />California also makes heavy use of pumped hydroelectric storage, in which surplus electricity during the day is used to pump water up a hill.<br />“There’s no doubt more solar power is going to come onto the grid in the future, and<br />that does increase the challenge of balancing the grid even on days when there’s not an eclipse.”<br />Nowhere is this challenge more stark than in California, home to nearly half the nation’s photovoltaic panels.<br />As the eclipse carves a long shadow over California on Monday morning, it is expected to knock offline more than 5,600 megawatts’ worth of solar panels at its peak — a big chunk of the 19,000 megawatts of solar power<br />that currently provide one-tenth of the state’s electricity.
