“If you have a massive cloud formation, the rooftop PV production can drop by so much that it looks like you have lost basically almost a nuclear power station.”

A good problem to have but still a problem. Who would have thought weather forecasting would be critical to grid maintenance.

Weather forecasting is important even before solar/wind. Extreme, temporary temperature swings require the power company to be prepared for the extra power generation.

With just coal/gas/hydro, this can be mitigated much easily, but still needs to be handled with care. If not, then the lack of power generation could cause brownouts for hours or days as backup power generation takes time to spin up.

TVA experienced an issue like this in 2023, where it was inadequately ready for a winter storm: https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/report-examin...

Since we build for "1-in-a-100", it's expected we'll have these failures, as a 1% chance every year is a pretty high chance that will keep increasing as these power companies rely more on non-failsafe power generation strategies. Texas is the extreme example, where over-reliance on those systems caused too much damage.

It always has been. A weather forecast is a major input into future demand prediction. Not just for heating and cooling, but there are also many second order effects.

Also severe weather predictions are crucial to have the staff ready to respond to grid outages due to weather.

> Who would have thought weather forecasting would be critical to grid maintenance.

They already have to keep an eye on the weather. For example, to predict demand spikes during heatwaves or cold snaps.

Do you think they haven't always needed to predict a cold snap?

Here in the UK they needed to watch the TV because a break or end of a large football match would cause a spike in demand.

Weirdly phrased since when you have a full, real nuclear plant you need to be ready to deal with that tripping off the grid suddenly, because it happens regularly.