from Hacker News

Eclipse October 2023

by cwal37 on 10/20/23, 2:44 PM with 22 comments

  • by kmax12 on 10/20/23, 6:04 PM

    I am one of the people who built this page and the Grid Status site. Cool to see this posted!

    Ultimately, the solar eclipse this weekend came and went without any noticeable impact for consumers of electricity. In my opinion, this is a very notable feat.

    A well-planned and executed response by grid operators to a predictable eclipse bodes well for a future where events like a particularly cloudy day, blizzard conditions across a large area, or widespread hail damage to solar farms could reduce generation by similar MW values in the middle of the day.

    As the grid becomes a more dynamic and volatile place, making operational and investment decisions based on data is more important than ever before.

    If this sort of stuff interests you be sure to check out our other dashboards: https://www.gridstatus.io/home

  • by lnwlebjel on 10/20/23, 8:20 PM

    Sort of related: the map at the top of this post understates the size of the shadow. One thing I did after the eclipse was look at the GOES images which show the shadow moving over the earth. It's huge and very cool to see:

    Here are a few sequential images:

    https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2...

    https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2...

    https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2...

    (I'm sure there is a better way)

  • by martin1975 on 10/20/23, 9:56 PM

    Dammit, I clicked thinking Eclipse was releasing an update to their IDE :).

  • by sand500 on 10/20/23, 5:52 PM

    I'm surprised to learn California has a few GW of batteries. Are these grid scale storage or people's houses feeding back into the grid?

  • by cowllin on 10/20/23, 5:39 PM

    When's the next one? How big does an eclipse need to be to start wreaking havoc on the grid? Or is that a "never" situation still?

  • by fotta on 10/20/23, 7:10 PM

    Unrelated but what’s the spike in Texas’ real time price around 6pm about? California also spikes around this time but is more spread out.

  • by ktpsns on 10/20/23, 8:58 PM

    Coincidentally, and since we are on Hacker News: What happened with the Eclipse IDE? I never heard anybody within the last 10 years to use it. Nowadays Visual Studio Code seems to be the hot shit of the generation. SCNR.

  • by einpoklum on 10/20/23, 6:33 PM

    Am I the only one slightly disappointed not to be reading about a new release of the Eclipse IDE (www.eclipse.org) with some major improvements ? :-\

  • by Eduard on 10/20/23, 11:49 PM

    how come solar is not listed in the two "fuel mix" stacked diagrams?