The old saw about solar power is that the sun isn’t always shining – but in a country as large as Australia, good engineering and intelligent grids can go a long way to overcoming the challenge of intermittency, according to Australia’s CSIRO.
The nearly 200-page report, Solar intermittency: Australia’s clean energy challenge, notes that to date, most discussion of intermittency is “anecdotal, difficult to verify and limited to a particular technical, geographical or social context.” Its 12-month study, supported by a grant from the government’s Australian Solar Institute, was conducted in conjunction with the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Energy Networks Association.
