News Release

What happens to solar power generation during a total solar eclipse?

April 5, 2024-- Large swaths of North America will witness a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, as the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, blocking the sun from being visible on its path. This relatively rare celestial event will draw crowds of onlookers excited to catch a glimpse of the eclipse through the safety of special glasses, but it poses a different challenge to those working in the solar energy collection, storage, and distribution spaces: what happens to solar power generation when the sun is fully or partially blocked during the day by a solar eclipse?

Jan Kleissl, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and principal investigator for the DERConnect testbed.

During the last total solar eclipse that was visible from the contiguous United States, in 2017, the effect of the moon blocking the sun had negligible impacts on the power grid. That has changed now, says Jan Kleissl, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UC San Diego, and principal investigator of the Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Connect testbed at UC San Diego.

“Yes, this total solar eclipse will have an impact on the grid,” said Kleissl. “That is mostly because there is so much more solar on the grid now than there was in 2017. However, the good news is that the impact is known. Grid operators excel in planning for incidents that are known; and the solar eclipse timings are known exactly and the magnitude of the power impacts can be estimated accurately. That means that grid operators can provide other generators and batteries with plenty of lead time to pay them to operate during the eclipse.”

These are exactly the kind of scenarios being tested at DERConnect. The testbed allows universities, utilities, and industry leaders to achieve a better understanding of how to integrate renewable energy resources such as solar panels, wind turbines, smart buildings and electric vehicle batteries into the power grid. DERConnect addresses an outstanding national need for large-scale testing capabilities across universities, national labs, industry, utility companies and Independent System Operators to validate future technologies for autonomous energy grids in real-word scenarios.

“Other unknown impacts constantly loom over the grid, such as the loss of a large power plant or a transmission line,” said Kleissl. “These impacts are unknown and can occur at a moment's notice. Grid operators constantly have to be prepared to deal with these types of events. Compared to these looming catastrophic events, an eclipse probably does not elevate an operator's stress level as much.”

Media Contacts

Katherine Connor
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-8374
khconnor@ucsd.edu