Germany is particularly exposed to the astronomical supply disruption, with as much as 40 per cent of its generation mix coming from its 1.4 million solar farms on a sunny day.
The sudden drop and recovery of solar generation levels will pose Germany’s grid operators with a particularly difficult task when balancing the grid, according to energy services firm Opower in a recent blog post.
But the company also warned that the challenge faced on Friday morning will soon become commonplace as the scale of renewable energy increases, intensifying the impact of intermittency.
“In the span of 75 minutes, the moon will go from occluding 1 per cent of the sun’s glow to 73 per cent. Solar production will fall, and fall fast — up to 2.7 times faster than it normally ever does,” said Opower.
“The effect is similar to turning off a medium-sized thermal power plant in Germany every minute — for a full hour,” Opower added.
The industry group for European transmission system operators said they have been preparing for the solar eclipse “for months” to meet the “unprecedented challenge”.
“The solar eclipse is a perfect illustration that maintaining system security with more and more volatile and dispersed generation is becoming increasingly challenging,” the group said.