Heatwave & Solar performance

While many of the plants in my garden are natives and planted to survive hot, dry conditions, there are some that have not.
So that's why my Silver Birch Trees are looking scorched and the Fuchsia is dry and frizzled after the latest heatwave,.






!!





The Financial Review last weekend published on its front page "Wind and Solar can't handle heat" by Angela Macdonald-Smith.
The RenewEconomy writer Ric Brazzale  hit back with an article indicating that Solar had helped to provide enough electricity during the heatwave days to reduce the peak load on the network. The effect of solar has also been to move the peak demand to later in the day as well.

"Solar PV’s contribution has been a lot more than just reducing peak demand by 4.6%. Its operation has meant that much higher cost generators have not had to be dispatched. As a result the wholesale power price has not risen anywhere near as high as other times when we have reached very high levels of demand. As a comparison Victoria’s previous peak demand of 10,415 MW occurred on Thursday, 29 January 2009 in the half hour period commencing 12.30 pm. The average wholesale market price during the afternoon (12.00 pm to 6.00pm) was $4,619/MWh."
and 
"Without the contribution of solar PV, many more assets would have come under pressure and more customers will have been disconnected.'

See the Australian Photovoltaic Insitute for details.

And by the way, comparing small scale PV on people's roofs to that of a large coal fired power station, as the AFR writer did, is patently absurd. I never bought my unit to be the sole electricity source and the advances in solar storage have not yet been made to allow the energy to be cheaply and easily stored. But that is coming, faster than the CO2 dinosaurs think.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/graph-of-the-day-how-aemo-saw-rooftop-solar-in-heatwave-27763 for the information below.