With PV systems, you have to be thankful when the weather conditions are good enough to actually generate a serious amount of energy. But conditions apparently weren’t great either: because too much energy was being pumped into the power grid, a transformer station in Upper Austria overheated and resulted in a blackout.
The cause of power outages that lasted several hours in Upper Austria was found to be: several operators of photovoltaic systems did not comply with feed-in limits for generated energy into the power grid, which led to overloading and power outages. , In a press release on Friday, the network operator announced regular checks and complete shutdown of customer systems in case of non-compliance.
To ensure that more and more customers can generate their own electricity through photovoltaic systems, feed-in limits are imposed on the generated energy into the power grid so that it is not overloaded. If customers do not comply with the specifications, the entire local network may be shut down for security reasons. This was the reason for the complete blackout in the Steyr region in early June. Because many operators did not comply with the limits, the transformer station overheated and protection devices automatically shut down the station. This caused a power outage in the village for several hours, affecting not only homes, but also the fire brigade, the municipality, a doctor’s surgery, a gas station and other companies.
“Ignoring the requirements can become a supply and ultimately a safety problem,” warned the responsible Netz Oberösterreich GmbH.
Since unnecessarily high feed-in efficiencies were found during a random check of the existing network of electronic electricity meters, the energy-ag group electricity and gas network operator has now announced stricter procedures. If an excess is determined, the customer will first be asked in writing to test their systems for compliance with the limit. If more than promised continues to be fed into the grid, it may result in shutdown of the entire customer system. This would mean that it would no longer be possible not only to supply PV electricity, but also to buy electricity. The system is not restarted until it is proven that all limits have been complied with. Netz Oberösterreich’s press spokesman, Wolfgang Denk, explains that no one wants to threaten individual customers, but: “It cannot be that some people do not follow the rules and others cannot be reliably supplied with electricity.” Might”.
Like Germany, in Austria too the wild dreams of an energy transition seem to be dashing into reality. Although heat pumps and charging stations for electric cars continue to add to electricity consumption, if too much electricity is supplied by photovoltaic systems the grid becomes inactive at the same time. If the Sun is not there, the production of energy by these systems collapses again. The expansion of renewable energy is of no use unless the power grid is expanded accordingly and storage options for these energy sources are scarce.
