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The United States Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) issued an April 4th Report titled:

April 8 solar eclipse will briefly limit solar electricity generation across the country (“Report”).

The EIA Report notes that the April 8th solar eclipse will:

…briefly but fully obscure sunlight to utilities-scale solar generation facilities from Texas through Main with the combined 6.5 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

Sunlight is also stated to be predicted to be partially blocked to facilities with a combined 84.8 GW of capacity in a larger area of the United States at the peak of the eclipse.

Solar-powered generators will of course be affected because of the moon’s either partial or complete obscuring of the sun which will block to varying degrees sunlight for more than four minutes. The Report also indicates that the partial eclipse could limit sunlight in the path of totality for more than two hours.

EIA states that the solar eclipse will impact electricity grids in two ways:

• Utility-scale solar generation of 1 megawatt or greater will have lower solar output along the path of the eclipse.
• Battery storage will be utilized to assist in balancing the electricity system by absorbing excess solar or wind generation when demand is low and then discharging it when demand is high.

EIA states that because utilities have been able to plan for the solar eclipse, they have prepared plans to deal with the change in solar generation during the eclipse. This will require the utilization of increased outputs from other sources of electricity generation to supplement the decrease.

A copy of the Report, including a diagram illustrating solar eclipse impact across the nation, can be downloaded here.