Not only did nothing bad happen, but a couple of the biggest solar farms in the country weren't even operating that day - they had turned off for lack of demand. One of the reasons for lack of demand is that nearly a quarter of Australians have solar on their roofs.According to The Guardian, rooftop solar is providing 23.7% of all the power demand, followed by wind at 15.7%, large-scale solar with 8.8% and hydro at 1.9%. Coal is still the largest provider of electricity on the grid, with power stations fed with black coal generating 35.7% and brown coal plants at 13.5%.Clean energy is set to make up a third of Australia's power needs through 2020-21 and will likely exceed that target.One of the great oddities of the way power generation works is that many power generation plants actually have to switch off or ramp down at times of low demand. This used to happen exclusively at night when there was much less demand for power, but now it happens more during the day, mostly due to the increased generation of power through rooftop solar). Some large scale solar and wind farms like Tailem Bend in South Australia (pictured above), has switched off 14 days in September, 18 days in October and most of November. Power generators regularly switch off when wholesale prices head past zero and into negative territory. Basically that means when demand is low, if they can't store their power, they literally switch off. (Presumably even if they could store power, there are upper limits on how much can be stored.)
Large and small scale batteries are the logical solution to storage, but are still very expensive. Eco News reported this week that a patented new battery design using non toxic zinc and manganese and incombustible aqueous electrolyte to produce a high energy density battery has secured a $1 million research contract with a Chinese battery manufacturer.