Sunny weather has forced the Czech state-owned company ČEPS to disconnect hundreds of solar power plants from the grid for the first time in history as their high production levels created a surplus that threatened the national power grid.

Plants were shut down remotely on Monday, during the Easter holiday, when the electricity consumption was low, but solar plants produced a lot of energy. Such a situation created a massive surplus of energy, threatening the Czech power grid.

“CEPS decided to activate the curtailment plan after exhausting the normally available operational measures to control the electricity system,” CEPS spokeswoman Hana Klímová told Seznam Zprávy.

“Since the situation was very similar in neighbouring states, it was not possible to use the assistance of neighbouring transmission system operators, which is one of the other options before curtailing production. All countries except Denmark, Portugal and Slovenia were in surplus,” she added.

Power plants with a total capacity of about 400 MW, which is more than a sixth of the total solar capacity in the Czech Republic, were temporarily disconnected across the country.

Experts warned that such situations could occur in the future much more often due to the current solar boom happening in the country in the aftermath of the decision to cut its dependency on Russian fossil fuel imports.

Experts on renewable energy sources are thus calling on Czechia to work on its accumulation capacity, which is currently missing.

“What we have been saying for a long time has been proven. The Czech Republic is not ready for the renewable boom because there is a complete lack of storage capacity,” Jan Krčmář, executive director of the Czech Solar Association, told Seznam Zprávy.

(Aneta Zachová | EURACTIV.cz)