eirgrid dashboard - solar

gooseman12

Not sure it has been mentioned elsewhere but noticed that the eirgrid dashboard has been recently updated to include solar energy production.

https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/

slave1

I remember reading about it somewhere, shame it's farms only, would love to see domestic PV export data

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531092#Comment_123531092

EirGrid don’t have visibility of domestic PV.

Farms are real time on their SCADA

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531092#Comment_123531092

Well they don't have data returns off residential solar, but that shouldn't stop them doing projections anyway.

slave1

esb know how much solar is being exported to the grid via MPRN and NC6 data

loyatemu

they know how many domestic solar installs are connected to the grid, I assume they could knock up something that gave a rough estimate. But if it's of no operational use to them, I doubt they will.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531216#Comment_123531216

True - though all those smart meters are pumping export data into some database somewhere every 30 minutes. Should be easy enough to aggregate the data and put it on a chart - though "strictly" not Eirgrid's remit if you consider them power station level.

Still, there's what 100,000 or so solar residential installs and if you have ~2kw exports going on from each one, that's 200mw of power being added to the grid at times (spit balling here). Quite sizable.

graememk

We should see the microgen solar show up as a reduction in demand too,

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531599#Comment_123531599

i was thinking the same; if one of the sources of generation is missing, then there should be a gap between stated generation and (fulfilled) demand; would domestic solar be the only source of generation which would account for the gap?

or is the calculated demand calculated solely from the 'known' sources?

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531618#Comment_123531618

You may not see it registered as a reduction in demand. Take the case as a thought experiment where there are 2 houses in my estate. Myself and my next door neighbour. I am exporting 2kw and my neighbor is consuming that. He's getting his required power and his meter is registering it (as in he's paying for it), but the local substation isn't requesting power from the power station.

If the demand is a the aggregation of all the substations, you won't see a "gap".

magicbastarder

yeah, i was thinking that might be the case after i posted that.

graememk

What i did mean, is overall demand, eg Actual system demand, but that would only be comparable on previous days, eg today vs yesterday, with one being cloudy and one being sunny (up here it is anyway)
Today

last week

Colder weather.. will have more demand too, so really hard to judge

the_amazing_raisin

I don't think we're really going to see a drop in demand, more likely a slowing in the rate of increase

Domestic consumption is only increasing with new houses being built with heat pumps and more people choosing EVs

That's why I find it so frustrating that builders can install 4-5 panels and still be an A rated BER. They should be covering the roof to get a good rating these days

There's also a steady increase in industrial consumption. Data centers are the typical culprit, however there's also been a dramatic increase in exports of pharmaceutical products which can be pretty energy intensive to produce

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123531994#Comment_123531994

Ahh yeah, I see what you mean and yeah, i agree with you. On a sunny day following a cloudy one, you might have 200mw of load removed when you compare the two. Course it's hard to know exactly why, but I could see it happening alright.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123533737#Comment_123533737

It irks me also these 4-5 solar panels on houses which allows builders to get the BER rating without really making a dent on the energy consumption. Now to be fair, it's better than no panels - but I'd love if it was mandated that if you have the roof space that you had to have 3kwp of panels or more, or pay a penalty. Mandating that you have to cover the roof might be unfair (I say that with 8.8Kwp in total myself) but considering that your average household uses 4.5mwh/year and it's going to likely increase over the next decade, 3kwp would be the minimum I think.

Datacenters get a bad wrap I think. Yeah 100% they consume 20% of the power of the country, but it's the same everywhere in France, Germany, Netherlands….etc Just part of modern life now and it's up to the grid operators to figure out how to supply them with renewable energy responsibly and reliably. Banning them would just mean they go elsewhere, if there's a demand….. they'll be setup "somewhere". If Ireland has one of the best wind resources, get them to pay for the generation infrastructure (as we are doing). It's a hard problem with there isn't a black/white answer.

Still though, to return to the original post. I'm wondering if we'll break the alltime high for solar this June? Today we're forecasted to be only 12mw away from the record.

EirGrid Group plc - Smart Grid Dashboard

ted1

Tathey don’t know. ESBN get the day , not EirGrid. If they were to the wouldn’t get it till the following day. They also don’t know the generation as it’s generally consumed locally.

I work with a number of TSO and DSO. And they just forget about microgeneration as it’s non dispatchable. They have control over it. Really it’s a PITA

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123533854#Comment_123533854

20% is a pretty sizeable load and going to cost us billions in penalties for not making our carbon commitments.
Saying they would just go elsewhere as if it’d make no difference is just wrong.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123534240#Comment_123534240

We may need to spin up a separate thread on this as there are I'm sure plenty of opinions on it and it's away from the original post. I don't see it as wrong/right thing as in you don't have to be wrong for me to be right and vice versa. It's … complicated.

Right now a lot of these data centers are helping develop our grid. They are purchasing contracts for clean renewables e.g.

Google’s clean energy progress in Ireland

green-light-for-apple-in-ireland - reNews - Renewable Energy News

Microsoft signs two PPAs with Energia for onshore wind power in Ireland - DCD

So it might not be a fair thing to say that they are the devil incarnate. This idea that if we get rid of datacenters and suddenly all our problems go away might be a bit simplistic. The grid is there to supply power to the needs of the citizens/society. That may mean that we have to develop and expand it as times move. Naturally we need to get that as renewable as we can

Alternatively asking people to stop watching Netflix, or cat videos on Tiktok etc is not likely to happen, so then we should do it in a clean responsible way.

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123535029#Comment_123535029

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