With a growing amount of solar generation, what lessons can be learned from how Europe prepared for and responded to the March 2015 solar eclipse?
- Extensive planning for the March 2015 solar eclipse was key to Europe’s success in addressing potential reliability issues.
- While diverse mechanisms were used to manage eclipse effects from country to country, all relied on ensuring sufficient capacity was available and leaned on neighboring regions to varying extents.
- As variable and distributed energy resources are deployed more extensively, other such large events and their effects may become more profound and less predictable using current approaches.
- Such events point to the need for effective forecasting of resource availability, enhanced operational planning, and greater cooperation among regions, in order to ensure reliability is maintained in the presence of weather-driven resources such as wind and solar.
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