By Nick Smith
Staff Writer
Posted: August 25, 2017 12:37 PM

While a majority of Lansing and Michigan residents Monday afternoon were looking skyward (hopefully with proper protection) to witness the solar eclipse that was visible throughout the country, an observation on the event’s impact on solar power generation was quietly observed closer to ground level.

Michigan Public Service Commission and Michigan Agency for Energy spokesman Nick Assendelft pointed out the following day on social media the effect the brief period of roughly 80 percent blockage of the sun had on the solar array located outside the offices of the two agencies outside of Lansing.

The solar panel array at the PSC/MAE offices was operating with an output of 15.881 kilowatt-hours at 1 p.m. Monday, according to charts and data Mr. Assendelft posted on Twitter the next day.

“There was a dip in production at 1:30 p.m. that was most likely due to cloud cover. Otherwise, it does appear that the array “saw” the eclipse,” an analysis stated in Mr. Assendelft’s tweet.

Data bears out the affect. By 1:30 p.m. when the cloud cover mentioned had hit the output of the array was at 4.934 kilowatt-hours.

The lowest ebb in output was recorded at 2:15 p.m., when it was at 2.169 kilowatt-hours. This was shortly before the peak eclipse viewing time in Lansing at 2:24 p.m.

Output steadily returned as the moon moved out from in front of the sun, with the array back at 8.878 kilowatt-hours and climbing by 3 p.m.

Solar energy company SolarEdge provided a map showing the effect across the country with the hundreds of thousands of arrays of different sizes at www3.solaredge.com/us/pveclipsetracking.

The eclipse also highlights a challenge with solar power: how to make it feasible when the sun isn’t shining.

Like wind energy, where obviously it’s not windy all the time within the range where generation is possible, the main problem is how to store power generated for when conditions aren’t right. Storing in batteries and a number of other experimental methods are being explored.

Of course, all forms of energy have their shortcomings. No amount of technology will ever make coal and natural gas completely clean and free of emissions regardless of the ad campaigns and lobbying of recent years to promote clean coal and natural gas.

For nuclear, rising costs in recent years has been a significant hurdle, as have been the safety concerns and where to store radioactive waste.