Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.landisgyr.com/ezine-article/making-way-two-way-p... > In the old days, when power companies were the only generators in town, control devices like regulators, capacitors or relays were designed to assume that power flowed in only one direction. “If they saw power flowing in the other direction, they typically tripped or misbehaved, causing customer outages or power quality issues,” Kuloor says. This tende…
This all feels like a buffering problem. Can power companies not just buy big batteries... you wouldn't even need that many, just enough to signal generators to do the right thing. (Also no idea all the gadgets in-between house and generators, but assuming all the gadgets can handle load going in and out)
And there are other approaches to power storage. Thermal power storage is popular / useful with large solar installations. Hydro dams associated with a reservoir often have pumped storage where they can pump water back into the reservoir and then use it when its needed.
The signaling and frequency matching is still an issue.
I recall a company I worked at in California had two sets of generators. They had a diesel emergency generator for the data center and also a set of natural gas generators to cut down on power costs (when the price went high). The issue with the natural gas ones is that they needed something else to provide the utility frequency, something about them not being stable/consistent on their own.
Rooftop systems have the possibility / likelihood of also destabilizing the frequency in the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooftop_photovoltaic_power_sta...
> An electrical power system containing a 10% contribution from PV stations would require a 2.5% increase in load frequency control (LFC) capacity over a conventional system an issue which may be countered by using synchronverters in the DC/AC-circuit of the PV system. The break-even cost for PV power generation was in 1996 found to be relatively high for contribution levels of less than 10%. While higher proportions of PV power generation give lower break-even costs, economic and LFC considerations impose an upper limit of about 10% on PV contributions to the overall power systems.
There's a reference to that at https://www.worldcat.org/title/ieee-transactions-on-energy-c... - which I don't have access to to quote from.
The key point to this is that if solar power is increased, then the grid as a whole needs to also increase its power to get back in control of the load frequency. That is likely what you're seeing. By itself, this storage isn't sufficient for answering that issue. Ideally, the solar systems would have their own local batteries and respond as part of a smart grid to contribute according to the load frequency. ... But that costs more money for the installation and consumers are hesitant to do that.
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/tesla-powerwalls-hooked...
https://www.provisionsolar.com/general/grid-outages-and-the-...