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Visualisation of the March 20 solar eclipse. Source: MeteoSwiss The risk of an incident in the UK is much smaller than in continental Europe, where solar has a much larger share of electricity generation (3%). Even so, researchers from Oxford University said they will be watching the event closely

Professor Alessandro Abate, an electrical engineer, said the solar eclipse would be an opportunity to observe what happens when a large section of the UK grid suddenly powered down – as in a power failure or when a major transmission line came down.

Visualisation of the March 20 solar eclipse. Source: MeteoSwiss The risk of an incident in the UK is much smaller than in continental Europe, where solar has a much larger share of electricity generation (3%). Even so, researchers from Oxford University said they will be watching the event closely. Professor Alessandro Abate, an electrical engineer, said the solar eclipse would be an opportunity to observe what happens when a large section of the UK grid suddenly powered down – as in a power failure or when a major transmission line came down. “Nothing is going to happen for multiple reasons. First of all only a small percentage of the electricity on the grid is generated by renewables here in the UK and further more the eclipse will only be partial,” he said.

I’m certainly not saying there will be a catastrophic cascading of blackouts. This is not going to happen. The only thing that is going to happen is there will be a bit of a dimming in renewable production and we are interested in understanding this slight variation, these small oscillations, that will propagate over the grid.” Abate said the next total eclipse over Europe will not be for 80 years, by which time the grid will have adapted to cope with the variability introduced by the surging renewable market. A spokesperson for the UK National Grid was similarly certain that there was no danger of blackouts. “It’s the kind of event that we forecast for all the time and lots of other generation is available. The eclipse isn’t happening at peak time so we can comfortably make up the difference,” she said. In the UK, more than half of the solar generation could be lost. But this will be largely offset by the drop in demand caused by people stopping what they are doing for a few minutes to wonder at the astronomical event. If it is cloudy, as currently forecast, then demand will increase but the drop in power, and thus the effect on the grid, will be negligible.