To: The Barracuda™ who wrote (1949 ) 5/1/2025 4:11:40 PM From: Gib Bogle Respond to Doomberg has written about the important role of large spinning turbines in stabilising the grid:Spanish Flu In January of 2024, we published “ Inverted Priorities ,” an essay that warned of an underappreciated risk posed by forcing intermittent renewable energy sources onto pre-existing grids. We began that piece by noting that modern electricity grids are classic non-linear systems susceptible to difficult-to-model interdependencies that can lead to unexpected challenges for operators. Traditional forms of generation—like coal, natural gas, and nuclear—provide an embedded buffer against grid chaos: Large spinning turbines endow electricity grids with the inertia to ride out minor fluctuations in frequency, reducing the risk of butterflies causing hurricanes. Solar and wind offer no such insurance, relying instead on inverters to deliver product to market.In an ideal world, enhanced fault ride-through requirements would have been imposed on renewable energy projects before they were allowed to reach critical mass on our grids, but the mad dash for public cash appears to have resulted in systemic corner-cutting. Redundancy investments do not come cheap, and we suspect the costs consumers will ultimately have to bear to abate this foreseeable risk will be substantial.
