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Comment by password4321 | Hacker News Reader

I am not very well versed on this topic but I believe the balcony solar products market one of their safety features as "anti-islanding protection". Personally I wonder what happens if multiple balcony solar systems are connected... can each still tell when the grid is down since the other power source is active?

https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/anti-islanding-and-smart...

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Unless there's so much generating capacity available that they can power the entire connected grid, no.

Consider 100 homes on a power line network and the breaker trips. They probably draw 50kW on average, more if it's hot or cold and AC is on. Unless there's enough power generation available to power that entire load, voltage will drop and any halfway reasonable hardware should give up.

people put few kW worth of micro-inverters and it is fine so I imagine that is figured out problem...

question is whether the ones allowed for sale implement it well and are tested for it

my understanding is that micro-inverters send an "up and running" signal encoded over the DC wiring to the main inverter, and that this is used to detect micro-inverter failure. that is an entirely different problem than the one in the GP comment, i think.

“Rapid shutdown devices” do this. Microinverters have the same “grid is down, turn off” logic as a main inverter

Again, entirely different to the point being raised.

You have 4 neighbors, all with grid-tied inverters, all of which will do rapid shutdown if the grid goes down.

The grid does go down ... but are there circumstances under which the presence of neighboring inverters will "hide" the grid being down from each inverter, and so they will keep delivering power back to the grid ?

Hobestly solving these sorts of problems could be a huge business.

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