Britain experienced its first big solar eclipse for 16 years on Friday, leaving commuters to make their way into work under darkened skies.
Watchful electricity grid operators, expectant scientists and excited schoolchildren saw the beginnings of the eclipse as a sliver of moon began to pass between the earth and the sun at around 8:30am. The peaked happened at about 9:30am — and wound down at around 10:40am.
The eclipse was only total to the north of the UK, in the Faroe Islands and the Svalbard archipelago. In Britain, the best views were in the north, where the sun was almost completely obscured. But even in London, around 85 per cent of the sun was covered at the peak of the eclipse although the capital and large swaths of the country were covered in cloud, depriving millions from viewing the astronomical phenomenon.
The next eclipse of this magnitude is not due in northern Europe until 2026.
The event was closely monitored by grid managers. In 1999, which saw a total eclipse over southwest England, a solar panel was a rare sight on a British roof or field. Today there is more than 5,000 megawatts of solar generating capacity, more than from Yorkshire’s huge Drax power plant, the country’s biggest