Higher voltage grids can't "feed in" from domestic networks

Who knows? There's no reason why domestic solar panels couldn't feed power back into the local grid - and they certainly did in a lot of places.

The grid as a whole wasn't designed to let this happen, and presumably when roof-top solar got popular enough that the neighbours couldn't be relied on soak up the extra power being fed back in, the grid managers got nervous.

The grid is going to have to be reworked to cope with solar farms and wind farms delivering intermittent power from different places at different times, and allowing roof-top solar to feed in big-time is going to be one of the new design objectives.

I don't see why, as its not high voltage when its on the domestic network, and one still needs to synchronise the 50 or 60Hz before you can do it in any case. I think we had a long discussion on this not long ago. Brian

Charge more cars!

That's backwards. If the grid handles power flowing in all directions, that precludes over voltages. How is that different from a sudden loss of load? Either the grid is resilient, or it's not.

You think a transformer will over heat because instead of running power in one direction at 100 kW, it handles power in the other direction at 100 kW? Grid attached residential power sources have to meet requirements for all manner of important details. Harmonic content is one of them.

Which is an engineering problem to be handled. It's not like this is going to be needed overnight. It just has to be managed.

LOL There are specifications on all these things. The customer's equipment is not connected to the line, until it is approved by the utility.

Again, already regulated. If the power company has no idea of what they are doing, that's not our fault.

I believe power reconnections are already handled by this type of equipment.

That must not be very important if you can't be bothered to list them.

Exactly. Why didn't you acknowledge this in the above list of concerns?

You could move!

The devil is in the details. If you end up with more current running along a cable than it was designed to handle, you lose the cable.

The high voltage cable between Tasmania and the Australian mainland was designed for 500MW. Some bright spark decided that it could take 615MW, and it stopped working and it took six months to fix it.

Since the current distribution system was designed around central generators, it may not work too well when you try to shunt currents between different bits of the periphery.

No amount of smart metering will stop excess current burning out transmission cables.

Smart inverters that can synchronise a roof-top panel to the mains won't cost thousands of dollar if they manufactured in volume, and they will be eventually. Their main job will be stopping the roof-top generation from burning out the local transmission cables.

Keeping what they do feed in in synch with the mains isn't exactly difficult. The roof top panels generate DC and that has to be inverted to AC anyway. Getting the timing right is dirt cheap, and the internet is there to handle any fancy signaling that might be needed.

Dickheads like Commander Kinsey won't have any local controls that they can fiddle with.

the customer feed it they don't have a smart inverter. Don't think for a minute they'll allow themselves to be vulnerable to damage by some mentally deficient like the OP.

Here is a url tha friend has solar at his house. His meter is so that it works both ways. I know of a church that has a roof full of solar cells and feeds power back to the grid .This in the US.

On Friday, 14 April 2023 at 06:20:19 UTC-7, Fred Bloggs wrote: ...

...

Smart inverters are mandated in California and they do not cost 'thousands' of dollars more than dumb ones.

My system uses an inverter per panel approach to mitigate shading and the inverters cost in the range of $150 each for 330 Watt versions.

It is not permitted to connect unapproved equipment to the grid, an inspection is required before the "Permission to Operate" is given.

kw

Is "Grid Manager" a real term ?

boB

Back before there were enough solar panels to generate enough power to create a detectable effect in the power distribution system.

Once there were enough solar panels to make a difference the people responsible for maintaining the power distribution system chose to avoid the problem by banning feed-in. It's not a long term solution, but buys them time to come up with a good long term solution (which shouldn't be difficult).