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From: Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Grand Apagon - Electricity (not) in Spain
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 09:31:07 +0100
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On 30/04/2025 01:38, john larkin wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 17:07:10 -0700, Don Y
> <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:
> 
>>>> Or, just solar "farms"?
>>>
>>> They can drop out entire blocks of switchgear to take a given region or zone
>>> offline (as would happen if a fault condition trips a breaker).
>>>
>>> The big problem on a really sunny day is that an individual house roof 4kW PV
>>> installation in late afternoon in the UK will be potentially exporting all of
>>> it to the grid. That is about 20-30 houses worth of electricity for each solar
>>> roof.
>>
>> Huh?  A single residential PV is enough to *power* 20 homes?
>> A 4-5KW installation would barely cover the home on which
>> it was sited.
>>
>> E.g., our "average" (24/7) load is about 1KW.  Of course, that
>> neglects the peaks that we see OFTEN throughout the daylight
>> hours (night load is relatively small -- a few LED lights
>> plus my computers)
> 
> Some people have air conditioners and electric tea kettles.

Almost no-one in the UK has aircon.
That is changing in big cities as the climate gets hotter.
> 
> I think some people have "electric fires", namely resistive space
> heating. Maybe horribly inefficient electric water heaters.

In summer heating is unnecessary and immersion heaters are used by 
owners of solar PV arrays because it pays them to do so (crazy).

But by late morning the hot water will be at maximum get and most of the 
4kW PV will be exported. I just checked my own domestic usage on the 
realtime display and it is 270W with my main machine running hard.

> Most of our heat comes from natural gas, which is very reliable.

Same in the UK although not for me since there is no gas supply here.
However, British Gas sells *electricity* to our Village Hall!

> But yes, one rooftop solar powering 30 houses is not reasonable.

It is in the UK. I might even have erred on the side of caution.

We don't have aircon, domestic walk in fridges or 2m TVs.

-- 
Martin Brown