On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 11:59 PM, Wouter Weggelaar wouterweg@gmail.com wrote:
- There is no reason in The Netherlands to not have extra renewable energy
sources. I really don't know how your "fossil fuel industry's opposition" can keep you from putting solar panels on your roof. I think everyone should!
Here in Italy we have a good amount of sunshine, yet the power companies (and local laws) do what they can to discourage renewable energy (it's not as convenient as it should be yet).
A - they sensed each other as valid grid voltage, leaving an engineer unable to cut the power on a section of line. There was no way to shut these suckers off in case you need to work at the substation safely
grids still are too "old" in this respect, they expect to have a "one way" direction for power flow, which is obviously not the case since some years now. To safely work on a piece of grid, it must be "cut" in more than one part.
B - the grid frequency (50Hz here) would run away upwards until there were MOSFets flying everywhere. We literally had a dozen kill themselves when we did that experiment. It was huge fun though, hearing them scream ;)
all line inverters that I know have safe limits for grid frequency, and after frequency crosses one of those limits, they just shut down the power.
Lastly, unfortunately my country is still pathetic in using solar power. we should really be doing more here and world-wide. Yes, we peaked at 100%, for a very short time though ;)
one good thing that european laws must do is to force all nations to make all is worth to permit more renewable energy generation. I think this isn't going to happen, at least soon, in my opinion.
73 Frank IZ8DWF