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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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I've never understood why this isn't the responsibility of the utility to prevent back feeding at the meter when the grid is down.
It's a good question but say they want to bring power back up to the neighbourhood as quickly as possible, and they would have to go to each house and shut off each connection which would take a while even if it were accessible outside without needing to inform the property owners. One residential transformer usually serves from 1 to 15 or so households. Many transformers are on one branch that extends from a substation. So depending on where they isolate, just one customer out of hundreds can backfeed which can make the entire branch dangerous to work, since normally it is all expected to be off on the other side. Putting the responsibility on the utility to isolate every downstream point is time consuming and just extends blackouts. However if they were to isolate smaller sections up and downstream it might make it easier.
I think I was more advocating for automatic switching at the meters when grid power isn't sensed at the meter. The same type of sensing that goes into larger solar inverters to prevent back feeding during power outages today. 20-40+ years ago your argument about having to go home to home manually shutting off connections would have made sense, but these days technology is advanced far enough that it can be done automatically without human intervention, as soon as the grid goes down. Then brought back up when grid power returns.
I think those technologies are the reason why it's easier for government to permit small personal solar installations now compared to before.
With generators it's harder to trust everyone that might have one.
Those regulations were made when solar power simply wasn't a thing. Upgrading an entire grid takes time. But of course, the utilities would rather lobby against change than actually get off their butts and change.
Network operators and electricity sales are decoupled EU-wide, meaning that the network operator doesn't really care if you feed in energy because they're not selling you any anyway. They're just operating the network, getting paid by whoever uses it. They care about the stability of the network but those solar inverters stabilise the frequency it so it's actually a net positive for them.
Of course, your municipality might have sold off its utility and now you're dealing with private sharks who invest nothing and just bleed everything dry. Or you're dealing with a CDU council and major who hate renewables because it's what the greens want.