What happens if the sun shines onto your solar panels, and you have too much power. I guess you could cover the panels with a blanket in such a case, but that would be manual intervention …

Do you need to consume all electric power you generate? Ways of wasting power include … heating water or electrostatics.

Most people would put surplus power they produce into the grid, but this is connected to government / cooperate regulations and paperwork, some would like to avoid that.

An island solution with solar panels is not connected to the power grid at all…

  • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    I’ve asked the same question before for small scale at home surplus.

    For a small/medium grid like a whole island, it’s easier. You generally know ahead of time when there is going to end up being a surplus, so you can let storage get low preemptively. This includes batteries, pumped hydro, heating water, heating/cooling homes, etc.

    If that’s not enough, you can run some high energy cost things that dont have to run all the time like desalination or electrolysis.