I've seen a lot of great photos and videos of the recent solar eclipse shared online and wanted to discuss a slightly different angle on the event. If you read my posts you'll know I have a strong interest in sustainability and climate change. Numerous articles came out before the eclipse highlighting the fact that California (and other states that get a large percentage of their power from solar) would experience a sharp drop in solar production during the eclipse and questioning whether that would impact grid reliability and lead to blackouts.
You can see in the images below (captured from the California ISO app on my phone) that the eclipse did cause a large and steep decline in solar energy production followed by a similar large and steep rise as the eclipse ended. This lead to an even funkier Net Demand curve (see the second image) which shows demand minus renewable production. Luckily, grid operators had months to plan and prepare for this, so the missing solar energy was covered with generation from natural gas and large hydro (not classified renewable in CA, though small hydro is).
In short, the eclipse did complicate energy production in California, a state with high solar power production during the daytime, but did not overly stress the grid or lead to blackouts. As states add more storage (via batteries, pumped-hydro, etc) the risk posed by such events will be minimized even more. California already has some grid-scale battery storage and will be adding much more in the near future.
*The eclipse photo used in the main image is one I took during an eclipse in Romania in 1999. I'm excited the US will have another solar eclipse in 2024 and it will go over my home state of Arkansas!