Solar Eclipse Energy Tragedy... apparently

[Adze]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31951768

I've read some dross before, but I reckon this might just take the biscuit.

Apparently a 2 minute partial eclipse of the sun is going to "present a significant challenge for the UK's electricity network"... wait what?

A 2 minute partial is going to cause MORE upset and be less predictable than the WHOLE NIGHT TIME WHEN THERE'S NO SUN AT ALL?

Hmm... is that goat? No, not goat... Horse then? No... definitely not horse. I've got it! It's BULL that's what it is!

Unsurprisingly there's no comments section on the Beeb site for this praticular non-article (deliberate typo)

 

[bob_the_baker]

That made me laugh - thanks for that.

 

[Tengu]

Whats more worrying is its the Beeb. No news day?

 

[dwardo]

Article, there will be panic!
Experts, no it will be fine actually
Article, will someone think of the children!
Experts, it will all be fine.

Must have run out of updates on clarkson gate.....

 

[ateallthepies]

8am woke up, grey gloomy light through curtains....went back to sleep, 9:30am grey gloomy light through curtains....went back to sleep, now thinking of getting up and having tea and toast in the grey gloomy light.....move along please, nowt to see here!!!

 

[mrcharly]

I work in an office with reflective film on the windows.
That, combined with the cloud meant it was possible to look directly at the eclipse (for brief periods). Had a great view, even managed to get a photo showing it on my phone.

 

[vestlenning]

Had a great view, even managed to get a photo showing it on my phone.

Wanna share? To cloudy here...

 

[mrcharly]

Willdo later, can't do it from work.

 

[Harvestman]

8am woke up, grey gloomy light through curtains....went back to sleep, 9:30am grey gloomy light through curtains....went back to sleep, now thinking of getting up and having tea and toast in the grey gloomy light.....move along please, nowt to see here!!!

No clouds here but grey gloomy light anyway. Something to do with an eclipse...

 

[Tony]

Well, we made 5 pin hole cameras for the kids and drove till we found a clear fog free view of the sun, pin hole cameras didn't work because i used the wrong paper DOH!!! Grease proof rather than wax paper! Wasn't thinking straight. So we ended up using 3 pairs of sunglasses or 2 pairs on the end of the pinhole camera with the paper removed (just the pinhole through the foil left)





























We also had an old box in the car so i pulled one of the pin hole cameras apart, took the foil and made a box projector, it wasn't great but it worked enough.

All in all it was cool, I don't think the kids really appreciate it, they probably will when they tell their kids though!!

 

[Toddy]

Foil christmas paper It works very indeed, it's really just mylar. I wiped the pattern off with some cellulose thinners and it gave us a sheet of the stuff to cut up and fold over double when the skies cleared.
Very cloudy here, but we did see the eclipse smile on us

M

 

[tombear]

Saw it fine here in east Lancs, mainly through a thin wash of cloud but for when it came between the clouds I had some thick smoked glass I acquired before the '99 eclipse ( it was 99? ) that I had miraculously found again.

It was remarkably unimpressive, didn't go dark here, animals didn't seem to notice apart from the dog walkers clustered together to gawp and their pets started to get over excited by the proximity of the other dogs. I got a bit of a walk, which is a good thing.

A few weeks back coming back over Saddleworth at night and there was a incredibly bright star,we are talking alien invasion or giant dinosaur meteor wiping out bright which turned out to be two or three planets and a big star lined up, now that was impressive!

ATB

Tom

 

[Adze]

A few weeks back coming back over Saddleworth at night and there was a incredibly bright star,we are talking alien invasion or giant dinosaur meteor wiping out bright which turned out to be two or three planets and a big star lined up, now that was impressive!

Mars and Venus lined up a few weeks ago - was it that?

Cloud helped a bit here... not having a decent camera didn't.

 

[Tengu]

It was very good. (made pinhole camera as advised by an old Astronomer I knew as a child and Gallileo.) Im sure the Faroese are happy. I imagine its the most exciting thing to happen to them in decades.

My neighbour was out viewing it with a collander.

 

[tombear]

Yup, that was the baby, it fascinated the kids and herself had one of the stargazing apps on her iPhone so they could find out what it was. I forget what star was also aligned. Even with the lights on the motorway it was just so bright up there on the tops.

ATB

Tom

 

[Adze]

Crow's pics on the Song of the Paddle are excellent... far and away better than my paltry effort above.

http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?48339-Eclipse

 

[DurhamBushcrafter]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31951768

I've read some dross before, but I reckon this might just take the biscuit.

Apparently a 2 minute partial eclipse of the sun is going to "present a significant challenge for the UK's electricity network"... wait what?

A 2 minute partial is going to cause MORE upset and be less predictable than the WHOLE NIGHT TIME WHEN THERE'S NO SUN AT ALL?

Hmm... is that goat? No, not goat... Horse then? No... definitely not horse. I've got it! It's BULL that's what it is!

Unsurprisingly there's no comments section on the Beeb site for this praticular non-article (deliberate typo)

And here is me thinking only the DAILY MAIL wrote complete and utter crap!......seems im wrong..and Jeremy Clarkson is right! The BBC are idiots!

 

[Adze]

The BBC are idiots!

Some of them perhaps... certainly their math's could use a little brush up:

At that time of day, about 1,000MW (megawatts) of power would be generated from solar (1,000MW is equal to 1GW).That is expected to fall by around 850MW.

Normally, that shortfall would need to be made up by bringing other power plants on to the system. But based on an analysis of what happened during the previous eclipse in 1999, National Grid expects many people across Britain to stop their normal activities to observe the phenomenon. That is expected to cause a fall in power demand on the network of about 1,100MW

Wait what? So normally we make a GW but demand is going to FALL by 1.1GW... so we're making a surplus of 100,000,000W from the allegedly crippled solar

After the peak of the eclipse at 09:30, power demand is then expected to surge by 950MW as people resume normal activities.

There's a great site here: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

You can see the daily demand range of the UK (and weekly monthly etc.) which is in the region of between 30 and 50GW... so a variance of 20GW... dealt with daily, without any fuss or drama. I'm pretty convinced that a 0.1 to 1GW variance due to the eclipse comes under about the same level of "oh dear" as "hmm... it's a bit cloudy today".

 

[tombear]

Er, with everyone going outside and staring gormless sly at the cloud layer surely the demand will have significantly dropped with no work being done or tea being made etc. it's after when everyone's turned the kettles on and the heating up to defrost that there will be brown outs and the end of the world or what ever they are whining about.

just a thought or as close an a approximation as I get to theses days....


atb

Tom

 

[Adze]

it's after when everyone's turned the kettles on and the heating up to defrost that there will be brown outs and the end of the world or what ever they are whining about.

Except there won't be. Because it's highly predictable in terms of supply and demand and the variance, at its absolute maximum will be (if you massage the above figures to make a worst case EOTWAWKI scenario) 950MW increase in demand + 850GW shortfall from reduced solar = 1.8GW. Or put another way, about 10% of the variance dealt with every day when day turns to night turns to day - people, after all, boil kettles, cook breakfast and run showers every morning do they not? Think of it as a very short lived night time on a 1/10th scale and its easy to see why it's a non-event powerwise.