Post #3465751

2026-06-29 07:01 UTC

Feels weird that none of "the progressive case for aircon" mentions solar. If this heatwave had happened in 2010, the European grid would have buckled in the daytime! As it is, there were some issues in the evening. The UK doesn't yet have that much solar capacity, and neither does France; but even so, imagine the power grid last week if it *hadn't* had that big solar chunk (this is France last Tuesday, during a scorcher; at 2pm, load was 57GW and solar was 19.5GW). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/29/progressive-case-for-air-conditioning-climate-adaptation

Replies (2)

@solar_chase@mastodon.green 2026-06-29 07:21

This is Germany - solar supply of 47GW at 2pm on that Tuesday, of grid load of 57GW. Solar was still supplying 18.8GW at 5pm. Can you imagine the situation 20 years ago when that solar contribution would have been negligible?

Open ##3466166
@GrahamDowns@mastodon.africa 2026-06-29 07:06

@solar_chase@mastodon.green Here in South Africa, panels are relatively cheap, and we get really good sun, but the bottleneck are batteries and inverters. We only have 6kW inverter and a 4.8kWh battery, which is nowhere near enough to run aircon. So while many middle-class homes here have solar, we still need to be quite selective about what we choose to run off the inverter vs what still goes directly off the grid. Do most people with solar where you're from run their entire house off solar, or is it a similar situation there, where people have to be conscious about the size of their inverter?

Open ##3467823