If you don’t like fossil fuels — and who does? — our betters in academia and environmental NGOs have the perfect answer: we can just get our energy in the form of electricity from the wind and sun. The fuel is abundant and free for the taking. The New York Times has reported that the cost of electricity generated from wind and sun is now lower than the cost of generation from fossil fuel sources. And even as we save money on electricity, we’ll be saving the planet! All the sociology and gender studies majors agree that we have a moral duty to switch our energy system away from fossil fuels to “clean and green” wind and solar electricity. Who could possibly be such a monster as to stand in the way?
At this website, I have devoted considerable attention to documenting major flaws in this narrative. In particular, I have written dozens of posts on the subject of the intermittency problem of wind and solar generation, which leads to a need for either full back-up at all times from another generation source, or alternatively for massive capacity of energy storage, in order to make a fully-functioning electricity system to power a grid without regular blackouts. As demonstrated in my Energy Storage Report of December 2022, providing sufficient energy storage in the form of batteries could multiply the cost of electricity from wind and sun by a factor of ten or more.
And it turns out that the intermittency problem is just one of the major issues with wind and solar generation that make those sources completely impractical and unaffordable to run an electrical grid. Another huge problem, which I have previously barely touched on here, is the problem of synchronization and inertia. My assumption is that nearly all readers will be almost completely unfamiliar with this issue, and with why this issue becomes an insurmountable problem as countries try to move to a predominantly wind/sun generation system. So let this post introduce you to the topic.
One of the things I do in my spare time is serve on the Board of something called the American Friends of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. That organization is an American charity that raises funds to support two affiliated organizations in the UK — the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and Net Zero Watch. On March 9, Net Zero Watch sponsored a presentation in Edinburgh by an energy consultant named Kathryn Porter. The title of the presentation was “Scotland’s Energy Crisis.”
Ms. Porter’s full talk can be found at this link. This Kathryn Porter is not to be confused with Katherine (“Katie”) Porter, the rather crazy ex-Congresswoman and current gubernatorial candidate in California. Our Kathryn Porter runs an energy consulting business in the UK and has a very informative website called watt-logic.com. And she definitely knows what she is talking about on the subject of how an electrical grid works.
While Ms. Porter’s talk specifically addressed the current situation of the electrical grid in Scotland, it turns out that that the most important problem that Scotland’s electrical grid faces is the problem of maintaining synchronization. If you don’t know what that means, I’ll let Ms. Porter introduce the subject:
Our power grids are built around alternating current, that is current that varies in a regular sine wave pattern over time . . . . Voltage also varies in the same way. This electricity is generated utilising some fundamental principles of physics. If you rotate one magnet inside the magnetic field of another magnet you can induce a current in a wire. In our power grids, this happens in conventional power stations.
An external power source is used to power electromagnets mounted on a rotor which is driven by a turbine to rotate inside another electromagnet called a stator. The turbines [of] all power stations turn at 3000 RPM to give a wave that has a frequency of 50 Hz (by dividing 3000 RPM by 60 seconds to get 50 cycles per second also known as 50 Hz) . . . . The entire power grid is structured around these properties: current and voltage alternate at a stable 50 Hz and the size and shape of the voltage wave must remain stable everywhere on the grid. [In the U.S., the frequency is 60 Hz rather than 50.] . . . Before a generator connects to the grid it must match the grid’s voltage, frequency and phase – that is the peaks ad troughs of the waves line up. This process is known as synchronisation.
What Ms. Porter calls “conventional power stations” include all thermal plants — fossil fuel and nuclear — and also hydroelectric power plants. But the term does not include wind and solar generators. Those do not have large and heavy rotating components that create and maintain the alternating current with constant frequency that is the essence of grid function. Instead, they produce what is called “direct current,” and then they have devices called “inverters,” that transform the direct current produced by the turbines or panels into an alternating current at the grid frequency. But while the wind and solar electricity can be altered by these devices into synchronized alternating current to fit into an existing grid, the wind/solar generation has no ability to maintain, let alone create, the necessary grid frequency. Ms. Porter explains:
“[I]nertia”. . . is a property where a conventional power station resists . . . changes in frequency – falling frequency would try to slow the rotation of the turbines but they are big heavy lumps of metal whose speed is hard to change, meaning they resist those changes and help to keep the frequency stable. This is important because a lot of equipment can break if the frequency moves away from 50 Hz by too much, including turbines, so they have protection relays that will simply cause them to disconnect if they detect a dangerous frequency level. If your power stations start disconnecting you end up with blackouts so it’s pretty important that doesn’t happen.
Conventional generators also have electromagnetic inertia which means they also support voltage. . . . If voltage rises too high or falls too low equipment can be damaged. If grid voltage rises, the current in the electromagnets that generate electricity in synchronous generators automatically adjust and act to pull the grid voltage back down. In both cases – frequency control and voltage control – conventional power stations do this automatically due to their physical properties. They do not require an external control system to detect changes in grid behaviour and instruct the changes.
Wind and solar generators behave very differently. They produce direct current i.e. current and voltage that do not vary in time. They are converted to alternating current using electronic devices known as inverters. . . . Inverters work by following what the grid is doing. . . . These inverters are “grid following” i.e. they cannot create the current and voltage wave.
So if you get rid of all the “conventional” generation sources, and you’re down to just wind and solar, how can you create a grid and keep it running with a stable 50 or 60 Hz frequency? Ms. Porter explains that there is a concept called “grid forming inverters”.— but those things don’t yet exist!:
There are some efforts to develop grid forming inverters that would [create the current and voltage wave] but there are big challenges in their development and so far there are no such devices in operation anywhere in the world where they are actually forming the grid.
The “grid forming inverters” are thus much like the magical “dispatchable emissions-free resources” that our New York energy bureaucrats are expecting someone to invent one of these days to solve the intermittency problem.
Ms. Porter explains that the big blackout in Spain in April 2025 arose from a lack of conventional power stations with sufficient inertia to stabilize the grid when a voltage anomaly occurred:
Spain has allowed most of the conventional generation in the south to close and is now struggling to control voltage, with the grid operator warning that further blackouts cannot be ruled out. . . .
And then Ms. Porter explains that Scotland has gotten itself into basically the same position as Spain. Scotland has gone all in on wind generation, while closing all but two of its conventional power stations. Thus Scotland seems to have plenty of electricity most of the time. But it is totally dependent on the two conventional stations to maintain grid frequency and inertia. One small blip, and the whole thing goes down. Oh, and they plan to close both of those last two conventional power stations within the next few years. Hey, the wind and sun are abundant and free!
There’s much more of interest in Ms. Porter’s talk, and it is well worth your time if this subject interests you.
The devil is in the details and the AGW alarmists don’t believe in him.
The best explanation of the problem that I’ve come across.
BTW, which are the two remaining “conventional” power stations referred to? There’s Nuclear at Torness but I know of no other unless Hunterston is still going. All the big coal-fired stations were closed with plenty of years life left in them. Are there a couple of gas-fired plants I’m not aware of?
Peterhead. Her speech transcript is at https://watt-logic.com/2026/03/14/scotlands-looming-energy-crisis/
Thanks for that, Scarecrow. There’s also a certain amount of hydro as well, tho’ the pumped storage scheme(s) is/are really only “peak-busters”.
Come back Longannet and Cockenzie, all is forgiven!.
What about reintroducing inertia by powering flywheels with DC current from the sources and attaching an alternator to each flywheel? Instant inertia. Would it be that much less efficient than a solid-state inverter?
I’ve wondered about the efficiency of the inverters .
The value of intermittents is just their fuel savings minus their maintenance – which is clearly very high .
Not to mention their environmental desecration .
Even their fuel saving doesn’t count. The backups consume lots of fuel on hot standby and operating at less that their design power. Nat gas for example burns from 28% to 40% of its full power fuel consumption just to stay hot at zero power output. So much of the fuel cost of the backup should be charged to wind and solar.
That’s not quite right. If you have a bank of gas turbines, let’s say 10 of them. When not immediately required for demand management you might have two spinning, synchronised and not producing. Those two allow the plant to produce reliable electricity at almost immediate notice, initially at 10% of plant capacity and then increasing an additional in 10% steps as each additional turbine is started and brought on line. More than one can start at a time and start times can be as short as 5 minutes. Of course, if two are in synch/ready, the other eight will be OFF, no fuel consumption. Fuel loads would be in the order of 10% for only two out of ten. That would be 2% of the full fuel consumption level.
As you ramp up production, (supplying electrical demand), you also kick in the waste heat recovery system, (combined cycle plants), and produce steam from the turbine exhaust, so your efficiency goes up. BUT only after you start making some turbine derived electricity first.
You don’t need all units on line and synchronised to the grid unless you expect a step load increase from zero to 100% within seconds. I’m not sure that wind is even that fickle.
Ian,
OK, but steam turbines need to be hot and ready to run, as must the boilers. Using them part time loses so much of the efficiency of a CCGT system that it makes little sense to waste their potential.
In a steam plant the boilers are always hot, (if operating), the steam is either used in a turbine or sent directly to the condensers. Very wasteful and even that has limits. Thermal cycling of the plant is a known cause of damage, best avoided.
They also take a lot longer to span their sensible output ranges, (eg 40% through 100%). Probably why steam powered plants are not the go to option for backing up W&S. And for similar reasons they are not ideally suited for the ‘fast’ response on the demand/load curve either, no problem on the slower responses though, (eg by the hour, not by the minute).
The go to option ends up being what is available, and in many places that is coal-fired power. The correlation of output between wind and coal in PacifiCorp East, where I live, is -52%…the minus sign means, of course, that as wind diminishes coal must ramp up to balance it.
The grid has to be balanced so gas on standby has to be all around the grid, not just in one place, to balance each sector.
So using your example there would be no bank of 10 gas generators in one power station, there would be 10 generators in 10 power stations.
And the quickest to respond – within seconds – are open cycle gas generators which are the least efficient.
It isn’t just sudden drop-out by wind which has to be considered, but increased demand sector by sector to which wind cannot respond. Gas backup has to be ready to go all the time.
Why would you need to have distributed generation? It’s an interconnected grid. If you have sufficient interconnectors then you could, (in theory), have all your generators in one spot.
If you find that hard to believe, then consider what most of the world was like before W&S, countries often had one or two regions that produced all the power. eg Brown coal fired power stations in Victoria, (Oz), they produced most of the power for the entire state, even for that smelter in the far south west. No forced need for small generators to bring the grid up locally.
With regard to the ‘least efficient’ being OCGT, I think you might have overlooked some others, eg open cycle coal, (since they don’t initially spin a turbine), or how about reciprocal engines, which have losses well over 60%. A gas turbine can be much more efficient than both of those and still be much more responsive.
With regard to your assessment that wind drops in and out in seconds, I suggest that you refer to the bid intervals on the national networks, as an example, in Oz, (east coast), the bid interval is 5 minutes. It could be expected that a wind turbine WILL rise and fall quite quickly but the bulk of the windmills in any generational group will have a better average AND their output will be curtailed to provide a minimum guaranteed supply over that 5 minute interval, eg all proving 80% of the expected peak value for the period AND ensuring that even in a lull, the total output from a field is still above the bid value.
Check charts of wind turbine output vs time. It varies a lot and it varies rapidly – a few minutes from peak to valley. If ten gas turbines on a grid that is part wind and solar is what is needed to meet demand when wind/solar drops to zero or rises suddenly, I suspect a lot more than two will be needed hot and ready to go to correct for such irregularities especially combined cycle steam turbines as it takes some time to get the steam side up and running from cold iron. Steam engines are a bitch that way. Even if a few can be shutdown at times, I suspect all will still need to be staffed 24/7 and ready to start and that cost $$$. There may be some power engineers out there who have actual experience with such issues that could offer more than my speculations.
Tell that to the 200-something people that died in Texas in 2021 when wind face-planted in the wake of a winter storm, zeroing out about 30% of Texas electric generation in the bat of an eye.
THE UK, GERMANY, SPAIN, FRANCE, ETC., ARE IN DEEP DO-DO, BECAUSE WIND/SOLAR SYSTEMS PROVIDE ZERO SYNCHRONOUS INERTIA TO THE GRID
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-uk-germany-spain-france-etc-in-deep-wind-solar-do-do
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The UK Conservative and Labor parties, using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media, brainwashed the people to vote for them for decades.
Those voters ended up having the highest electric bills, i.e., total bill divided by consumed electricity, c/kWh, while the elite Owners are laughing all the way to the bank.
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Any energy systems analyst would know Spain/Portugal-like blackout problems would eventually happen, before a single W/S system were connected to the grid, but naive, woke, technically illiterate enviros do not want to listen to the pros. All wind/solar/battery nonsense must be stopped dead by taking away the generous subsidies.
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The More W/S Electricity on the Grid, the Less the CO2 Reduction/kWh, due to Inefficiencies
Analysis of 2013 data of the island Irish grid showed the CCGT fleet operating at about 50% without wind; at 45.58%, with 17% wind.
At higher W%, the CCGT fleet operates at lesser efficiencies (high Btu/kWh, high CO2/kWh), until no CO2 is reduced.
Fortunately, Brussels paid for major connections to the much larger UK and French grids.
As a result, most of the ups and downs of wind output disappeared in the noise of the large grids.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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Expensive Wind/Solar Systems
The over-taxed, over-regulated taxpayers and ratepayers are paying at very high rates, c/kWh, for: 1) electricity, and 2) Heat Pump heating/cooling, and 3) EV driving.
There is no way such high-cost electricity would increase standards of living and increase the GDP.
Businesses and skilled people would move to low-energy-cost states.
These businesses and people are tired of paying for:
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1) Highly subsidized, expensive W/S systems that disturb the grid with weather-dependent, variable, intermittent electricity, which has caused expensive brownouts/blackouts, as in Spain/Portugal, California, Texas, New England, etc., and many other places, over the years.
2) Grid expansion to connect all these far-flung wind/solar systems to the grid,
3) Grid reinforcements to ensure the grids do not crash during periods with higher levels of W/S power
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Here are some operational realities of W/S systems that are at the core of their problems:
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Synchronous Rotational Inertia, SRI, Stabilizes the Grid
Closing down traditional plants (nuclear, gas, coal, hydro), with rotating generators that provide SRI, de-stabilizes the grid; a death sentence for the grid.
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Wind/solar systems provide ZERO SRI to help stabilize the grid, because their variable outputs are digitized, then reconstituted into an artificial sine wave with the same phase and frequency as the grid.
Super expensive battery systems provide ZERO SRI.
Battery systems can provide virtual inertia, at very high c/kWh, by means of their back-end DC to AC power electronics (which failed in Spain/Portugal), which can quickly counteract voltage/frequency drops for a short time.
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Connections Between Grids
Almost all grids have connections to other grids for import and export purposes.
About 50% of such connections are high-voltage, direct-current lines, HVDC
Such DC connections transfer power but transfer ZERO SRI to other grids.
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Reactive Power
No AC grid can function without positive reactive power; say power factor of 0.8
Wind/solar systems draw reactive power FROM the grid; say power factor of -0.8
All traditional power plants are automatically set up to feed positive reactive power TO the grid.
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Synchronous Condenser Systems
The weather-dependent, variable/intermittent, wind/solar feed-ins to the grid often create transmission faults.
Those faults are often minimized with synchronous-condenser systems that provide positive reactive power TO the grid.
Blackouts
In case of too much W/S power, it needs to be curtailed.
Owners usually get paid for what they could have produced.
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In case of too little W/S power or a W/S outage, reliable, quick-reacting CCGT plants, in Standard Operating Procedure, SOP, mode, would:
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1) Provide a few seconds of SRI “ride-through” to give switches time to switch, and
2) Provide power to the grid, within seconds, to counteract voltage/frequency drops, 24/7/365
3) Enable automatic load shedding to take place, as needed, etc.
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NOTE: If battery systems were used, they would be empty after a few hours, with no prospect of a black grid to refill them.
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NOTE: Spain/Portugal would have needed about 10,000 MW of CCGT plants in SOP mode to avoid its recent blackout. As a fleet, they would operate at up to 75% output throughout the year, and quickly provide up to 2500 MW, in case of a W/S outage.
Sure. Could do that. Even have a DC powered flywheel to make AC at each wind turbine. When one wind turbine gets a little bit more or less wind than the others, voltage and frequency of that flywheel change. Then what? A mess and a blackout is what. Then there is the efficiency loss in the DC motor and in the flywheel generator. Anything left for us?
The amount of energy stripped from a flywheel is no different to the energy stripped from a gas turbine. If you want to supply power to the grid you add torque at the shaft input, this attempts to speed up the grid and hence supplies power to the grid.
So the flywheel approach will work, the DC motor just supplies torque to the generator shaft. More torque, more power.
What most people forget is that a large generator is just a large motor. You just apply torque to the shaft to make electricity instead of extracting torque, which consumes electricity. A generator, in synch and producing no power is at that sweet spot where the input torque energy exactly matches the friction and electrical losses of the unit.
Ian,
as I pointed out in an earlier post, inertia is only a damper and just slows the effect of grid load and supply imbalance. To maintain frequency requires a controlled variable input from synchronous generators. Inertia alone is not enough.
Inertia carries you through the bumps on the road not the change in gradient.
This little detail is often lost in discussion. As you note, the sustained load changes need changes to the fuel consumption, etc. The control loops respond in accordance with the physics of the plant, eg a coal fired plant may allow a rate of change in the order of a few percent per minute. CCGT maybe 10 or 20% per minute. An inverter based system could be 100% almost instantaneously.
Only the spinning mass of the large turbine based plants will provide inertia to cover the ‘bumps on the road’.
Yes. Newcomen knew that in 1712 and his great revolutionary idea was to attach a governor to regulate steam input.
And a large flywheel was in use.
What most people forget is that to get more power out, you just turn up the gas or throw another shovel of coal into the boiler; you can’t turn up the Sun or throw another shovel of wind at the turbine blades.
Here’s a solution for the solar panels, or wind. Instead of offering 100% of the output, (as currently illuminated/wind blowing), for sale, offer 80% of that value instead.
When a sudden demand arises, the solar/wind system can offer up the last 20%. The W&S powered system CAN provide extra, if it is not currently supplying at it’s capacity.
This is EXACTLY the same as a gas turbine or any other generator. If the throttle setting is below 100%, you can always press the pedal down some more. But once you are at 100% then that’s it, no more to give.
No it’s not the same, because the wind and Sun cannot be relied upon to produce any steady amount of power, whether you’re using 80% of it or 100% of it makes no difference.
With wind and solar, there’s no “throttle” to press. Generation is haphazard and unpredictable and inconsistent and unreliable. ALL BAD when attempting to supply a grid.
A lot depends on the quality of the bearings.
Synchronous condensers, which are effectively synchronous generators (AKA alternators) without a prime mover are being installed just for the purpose. These provide both inertia and controllable reactive power to help stabilize the grid and have been in use for this purpose for more than a century. What they don’t do is provide dispatchable real power to stabilize frequency.
Synchronous condensors cannot maintain synch on their own. They depend on the fuel-driven grid generators to maintain the frequency and phase on the grid. If the fuel-driven generators fail then so do the synchronous condensors. You are correct that they only provide for momentary inertia during things like short circuits and/or do the same job that used to be done by large banks of actual condensors to correct phase lag from inductive loads.
They are valuable additions to the grid but they can not maintain the grid over blackouts.
SCs are like electrical flywheels, synchronized with the grid,
They take the negative reactive power of a wind system that would destabilize the grid and smoothes it to positive reactive power that reinforces the grid.
The loss is about 3%, so if New England wind is at 0.30 cf, then 3% is lost due to the SC.
There are other losses before entering the HV grid
I’ve heard that grid scale batteries can have special type of inverters so they can then lead the grid frequency rather than as most batteries do, follow the frequency …. Out of the narrow range if there is a problem.
I don’t know the details or at what scale does the feature work. In any case most grid batteries capacity is for selling MW at peak and buying off peak, often a small amount is dedicated, for a price, for grid stability. My hunch is th.at this works non local scales but not large areas when the quantity of renewables is freeloading. After all even a few heavy turbines can’t support every grid when stability is lost and load is dumped instantly to restore
Duker,
did you miss the point in the article that says they do not practically exist, certainly to scale.
The inverters can be made to operate lagging or leading of the grid, that bit is easy. If the inverter tries to lead the grid, then it will supply a lot of active power as it tries to speed up the grid, (which of course it will never do).
It’s another way of transmitting power from an inverter to the grid. The other way, (as used by a lot of domestic inverters), is to output exactly in phase with the grid but at a slightly higher scaled voltage. The higher voltage forces current from the inverter TO the balance of the grid. This works till the voltage is too high, (caused by too many inverters, usually in suburbia or when the supply cable impedance is higher than normal).
Grid scale inverters go for the phase angle over raising the voltage. And of course, this works just like a standard thermal power plant. You add more fuel, which results in more torque applied to the generator shaft, which marginally advances the wavefront on the generated supply.
AC generation is a great topic, if only our politicians bothered to understand it before crippling it.
Politicians will only rarely understand it. This is the problem with almost anything they try to fix, control, or make affordable!
Art,
yes this is done, in devices known as rotary condensers which also assist with reactive power control which inverters cannot.
The fly in the ointment is they are parasitic of power and a big but, the grid needs more than inertia which is basically a damper. Any drop in frequency due to either load increase or drop in supply needs dispatchable generators to increase power. (which they do automatically) to maintain frequency. These devices have no reserve power simply inertia.
This obviously needs a reserve in dispatchable generation capacity so the grid controller needs to be aware and anticipate if further resources may be required.
So sticking plaster remedies can only do so much, and add complexity and cost, stable and reliable grids need sufficient dispatchable capacity.
On British Rail mk 2 coaches the ac supply for fluorescent lighting (and, I believe, the air con) was provided by a dc motor/alternator set, the dc supply coming from underslung batteries re-charged by axle-driven dynamos. There must have been a good reason for using this somewhat complex arrangement rather than feeding the battery output through inverters.
A flywheel won’t solve the problem because the energy source – wind/solar – is not dispatchable.
Left out of the explanation in the article was the fact that spinning generators – steam/gas turbines – have governors (Newcomen’s great invention on his steam engine) to regulate the energy going in. Too high, the governor reduces input, to low it operates to increase input, thereby keeping a constant speed of rotation. Inertia plus the ability instantly to speed up or slow down is how spinning generators resist frequency change and maintain frequency.
The flywheel is just an energy store. It would require constant input to keep it at 3 000rpm (that would be energy not available to supply the grid) but the energy supplied – wind/solar – cannot be increased/decreased at will. If, for example, conditions on the grid started to slow down the flywheel, the wind/solar generators would have to work harder maintain its speed – they could not do that because the wind cannot be made to blow more, the Sun cannot be made to shine more.
That dratted intermittency problem just won’t go away.
I’m sure Rube Goldberg could invent a product to do this kinda stuff.
“What about reintroducing inertia by powering flywheels with DC current from the sources”
How does the DC maintain the flywheels at the correct frequency and phase? The alternator doesn’t automatically produce the correct frequency and phase, it’s based on the speed and synchronization of the flywheel. The flywheel, once synchronized, would have inertia that would resist changes but first it has to be synchronized. How do you synchronize the flywheel from a DC current?
You attach the flywheel to a large synchronous generator. The far end of the shaft has a DC motor that can be powered up to spin the flywheel.
You can oversize the DC motor and make it just like normal fueled generator, eg gas turbine etc.
To synchronise the flywheel/generator system you first spin up the unit, (using the DC motor), till the frequencies match, then observe the phase angle between the grid and the generator output. There will always be a little mismatch in the frequency, so the phase difference will drift, when the phases align, (preferably with the generator slightly advanced), a switch is thrown and the generator and grid are connected together.
After that, you just add DC power to stop the flywheel system acting as a motor, if you wanted you could add more torque and make it a generator.
Imagine the video below being a DC motor powering the power plant instead of water rushing down a pipe.
Good article! Kathryn Porter knows her stuff. I’ve been following her on X
Here in NY, thankfully, we have a fair amount of hydro and nuclear power for the upstate parts of the system. For downstate and especially for NYC, the grid inertia issue makes the recent intentional shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear facility all the more senseless. There is talk of possibly re-building and re-starting it.
‘Here in NY, thankfully, we have a fair amount of hydro and nuclear power for the upstate parts of the system.’
But the Left (see below) doesn’t seem very happy about it. Perhaps someone should inform them that if they hadn’t spent so much on subsidizing their beloved intermittent energy sources, they wouldn’t have had to pony-up for capacity payments to keep their base load nuclear plants operating.
https://riverheadlocal.com/2026/02/20/a-33-billion-nuclear-bailout-is-coming-to-your-electric-bill/
Thank you Francis, this is really important. If you only know two things about the so called climate change crisis it is this. Number one CO2 entering the atmosphere due to man burning fossil fuels can’t cause catastrophic runaway global warming. Number two even if it could wind and solar can’t replace fossil fuel. Stop pissing away our time, money and resources on this fairy tale.
What I’ve always thought should be mandatory for wind and solar supplying to the grid, is for it to be used to power a huge rotating mass, via a DC motor, to provide synchronous frequency stability.
It would have to be backed up by a fast-acting gas turbine.
This is done before the electricity can be fed to the grid.
The wind or solar company is then totally responsible for providing frequency stabilised dispatchable electricity to the grid…
…and for carrying the cost of the back-up generation.
And the back EMF when a wind turbine slows or speeds up?
Why not just have the fast-acting gas turbine all the time and do away with the rest? The fast-acting gas turbine would have to be running all the time anyway in order to synchronize the huge rotating mass, just attach the huge rotating mass to the gas turbine and be done with it?
Excellent discussion of the need for synchronization and grid inertia. As Mr. Menton pointed out, the US grid operates at 60 hertz–60 cycles per second; the turbines turn at 3600 rpm–60 cycles per second.
Second point on wind and solar deployment. We simply don’t begin to have enough wind and solar to power the grid, and to power up batteries (or pump water for pumped hydro storage or compress gas or an other energy storage scheme)for times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, and we are unlikely to ever have enough.
Where I live in eastern Kansas (Southwest Power Pool territory–windiest place in the country), the power pool has approximately 40,000 MW of wind capacity, and some amount of solar. The maximum wind generation ever was approximately 24,000 MW, solar runs about 1500 MW, and both fluctuate a lot. Wind and solar have never come close to meeting the full demand for electricity, and there is no excess at all to power up energy storage facilities for times when wind and solar can’t meet the demand. This is just not going to happen, and probably shouldn’t because of the need for synchronization and grid inertia.
starzmom said: “Wind and solar have never come close to meeting the full demand for electricity, and there is no excess at all to power up energy storage facilities for times when wind and solar can’t meet the demand.”
This is something that I haven’t heard many people talk about. I’m not an expert in all of this by any means — despite having a degree in Electrical Engineering — but it seems to me that in the real world, any system that relies on battery storage to make it viable would have to allocate a large portion of its output to charging the batteries, thus effectively making their output available for the electrical grid only when the sun isn’t shining or when the wind isn’t blowing.
And you *still* have the problem of synchronizing the output of the batteries even if you could generate enough power to charge them while also running the grid.
That allocation needs to be based on it’s minimum generation capability as well. I live this every winter. I have rated 9.5 KW of solar and 26Kwh of battery backup. My house/property parasitic draw is about 500w. However, when I’m actually doing something (computers on, lights on, refrigerator on, heat pumps on, well and booster pumps on)I can pull 5Kw+.
From late Nov through mid Feb, I have to play games with my backup level on the batteries to make sure they are full enough to at least get me through the PGE peak pricing period.
BTW: I live in sunny central California; use propane to cook, dry clothes, heat water; and have a wood stove that I use for primary heating.
Here is what the sky looked like while I was getting that 1.7KW
Just one additional point here about the speed of the synchronous generators for nuclear or thermal power plants. For a 60hz system, 3600 rpm is the speed for a two-pole generator. 1800 rpm is the speed for a 4-pole generator (as for the Nine Mile 2 nuclear unit on Lake Ontario.)
Hydropower turbine generators are slower yet. Hoover dam uses hydraulic turbines spinning 180 rpm driving 40-pole generators. I just looked it up to be sure.
Similarly, the Niagara River and Niagara Falls turbine generators run in the 75-375 rpm range for the 60 Hz grid.
It would be nice if the large wind and solar generators were required to do the following: –
a. Install batteries sufficient to provide and maintain 7 days of power output at their mean output, (eg 15% for solar and 30% for wind of their name plate capacity). And
b. Install large synchronous generators to provide the inertia that they are parasitically relying upon. It would be reasonable to demand that they provide a matching amount, measured against an equivalent hydrocarbon based generator or hydro facility.
Both of these requirements are capable of being delivered using existing technology, there is no need for new products or university pipe dreams to be manufactured/conjured before implementation.
I wonder why the governments of the world are not insisting on this level of grid protection. As a singular sample of their short sighted views in this venture, they more than willingly make laws to prevent a ship going to sea without sufficient fuel or sufficiently seaworthy, why not apply that same level of care to the domestic grid?
Maybe the people don’t matter. At least not until an election is called.
Battery technology has not reached the stage where batteries are any sort of solution to reliable, consistent, strong baseload power.
The problem is not the batteries, they exist, it’s the cost of them.
You can already buy batteries that will store energy for more than a year but to buy enough of them to power the grid is well outside the capability or desire of the consumer’s wallet.
Cost, it always comes back to cost. The wind and solar generators are taking cash out of the system and having the reliable items of plant pay for fickle/unreliable nature of the W&S. The problems of intermittent supplies attached to the grid will not be fixed until the costs of meeting that fickle demand are lumped on the source of the problem.
Yes.
What you propose is logical. Such a system would actually produce power from wind and PV solar. It would also force the renewable proponents to face the true cost of wind and solar.
What synchronizes the synchronous condensors providing the inertia when the fuel-driven generators fail?
Nothing. When fuel-driven generators fail, so does the grid.
While this article lays out many of the problems with powering a reliable grid with intermittent sources like wind and solar, the bigger problem is that these intermittent systems consume more energy to produce, operate, and dispose of than they will ever generate in their operational lifetimes. Prove me wrong, show me a single solar or wind turbine manufacturer using predominantly the output of their systems to produce more systems. If they were truly “cheaper than fossil fuels” it would be madness to use anything else to make them. Just give me one example. I’ll wait…
Please don’t hold your breath while you wait for an example.
The large coal-fired power stations are the source of stability in the grid in the East coast in Australia. We must fight to continue with them and build more and keep our own coal away from the Chinese, using it at home.
Australia has a split personality when it comes to coal.At home it is wanting to close down its coal fired generation whilst at the same time also having a large scale coal mining for export policy.
Of the 95 such export projects in the world almost half, 46, are underway in Australia.
IEA ‘Coal 2024 Analysis and Forecast to 2027’ (Dec. 2024)
We have grid forming inverters in our home solar/battery system.
https://enphase.com/store/microinverters/iq8-series/iq8plus-microinverter?_gl=1*hm2trn*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwspPOBhB9EiwATFbi5Nftnb2Q3lAB6fz7urfayQHKzUNbQuP0yf39XVAMKwxgSM1NRQnKNRoCGOAQAvD_BwE
Now hook your system to the neighbour’s property, (if they are also off grid), and see which unit wins the tug of war on phase and current.
I would expect that to be successful, grid forming inverters would need to be very large to be able to impact the grid. These appear to be for a single PV panel.
I think you need to read more on your system operation. I suspect that if the grid fails then your system will go into “island” mode, disconnecting itself from the grid. That’s because your system can’t actually “form” the external, utility grid without a syncing source – i.e. the external, utility grid itself.
Splendid piece as always by Francis. The irrationality of it is incredible. We are really living through a period of a series of synchronized waves of some the greatest popular delusions of history. Or rather, of some of the great elite delusions.
I don’t notice any enthusiasm for any of these delusions in the population as a whole. It seems to be confined to elected officials, journalists, civil servants and senior managers of large corporations.
Don’t come across too many plumbers, electricians, farmers or engineers who are really persuaded that there is a climate crisis, that they really want and need electric cars, or that men should be competing in womens’ sporting events, or that LGBT+ for Hamas is a sensible concept.
According to Faraday’s law this is not true:
“If you rotate one magnet inside the magnetic field of another magnet you can induce a current in a wire.”
What actually induces currentYou need relative motion that changes the magnetic flux:
That’s what they taught us at school, i.e. that moving a conductor within a magnetic field will generate a current in the conductor.
And, it doesn’t matter which moves, but one has to.
Right
“My assumption is that nearly all readers will be almost completely unfamiliar with this issue…”
Unfortunately I think that may be so, which tells us much about the state of education these days. In my school days it was part of secondary school physics.
Spain now has determined that 48% of electricity supplied to the grid will be from spinning generators, ie gas, to avoid a repeat of the April “experiment” where 73% of input was from “renewables” of which over 50% solar and the entire Iberian Peninsula grid shut down within half a second.
There is another overlooked aspect, the local, low voltage grid. This cannot carry the load that would be demanded by an all electric society. In the UK this is mostly underground, and probably mostly the same in other European Countries, so imagine the cost, resources needed, and disruption to replace this network from the HT grid right up to point of consumption.
The focus is entirely on how to generate electricity, and how to upgrade the HT grid. But the system has a single point of failure – the bit in the middle, delivering electricity from the HT grid to the consumer.
Re the UK low voltage local networks one estimate I saw a few years back for replacing the 80% of our 450,000 kms which is only built to accommodate ‘lighting plus’ was £60bn
The image at top- nice Rube Goldberg machine.
“the cost of electricity generated from wind and sun is now lower than the cost of generation from fossil fuel sources”
Not if you do proper accounting since the wind and solar systems will need to be rebuilt far sooner than a ff facility- and of course for countless other reasons.
She is quoted as: “If you rotate one magnet inside the magnetic field of another magnet you can induce a current in a wire. “
OK, I suppose, BUT a simpler, accurate, explanation is ONE magnet moving near a wire will make electricity.
As to rotating mass: Isn’t the real issue that mass’ can supply huge amounts of energy for a few milliseconds/seconds to deal with a fault? That means that all one has to do is spend a lot more money on inverters that can handle very high surges and even more money on the source of the power to feet those surges.
As to the inverters that do not need a stable power source to synchronize to. I have one installed in my car – does not require a power line to enable it and cost under $100 from china.Also some household solar systems can run independent of the local grid.