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What to do with surplus solar power in an island solution? (lemy.lol)

submitted 2 days ago by greenbelt@lemy.lol to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What happens if the sun shines onto your solar panels, and you have too much power. I guess you could cover the panels with a blanket in such a case, but that would be manual intervention ....

Do you need to consume all electric power you generate? Ways of wasting power include ... heating water or electrostatics.

Most people would put surplus power they produce into the grid, but this is connected to government / cooperate regulations and paperwork, some would like to avoid that.

An island solution with solar panels is not connected to the power grid at all...

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[–] greenbelt@lemy.lol 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

electric potential? is the solar circuit a giant capacitor with a stored charge then?

[–] davad@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Maybe you could think of it that way, but I don't think PV cells store much charge, so they'd make pretty crappy capacitors.

[–] polotype@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is a bit complicated, but basically, energy is power×time and power is intensity×tension. Now if you have too much power, because you can't affect the flow of time (sad), you either change tension or intensity. The easiest is to just lower intensity (or cut it out entirely). If you just open your circuit, your intensity falls to 0. So your power falls to 0 and everything is fine. Just like how when you stop a windmill rotating it doesn't produce any power.