Whoever wrote this has an extremely outdated technical understanding of renewables and energy storage… or wants to push this outdated understanding out of an economic interest/agenda.
Yes, a stable AC grid needs inertia, which was historically only provided by the generators in gas, coal and nuclear power plants. Yes, inverter-connected systems like batteries and PV plants don’t provide inertia naturally. But there are control algorithms out there which would enable these systems to provide inertia just as well… And they could be going into large-scale rollout at least on new batteries and wind power plants within months if it was required by grid codes or incentivized by a market.
I agree that, whatever exactly happened initially, led to a disconnect of the mostly photovoltaic generation in Spain (not yet outfitted with such synthetic inertia algorithms) and the central European grid where more natural inertia was available. The high local PV surplus no longer exported to Europe led to an enormous increase in the grid frequency. The PV plants disconnected which led to a just as quick decrease of frequency and an automatic disconnect of loads - boom, the grid is dead. So far, their analysis was also what I presented to my students on Tuesday. But drawing the conclusion that renewables are bad just reveals either incompetence or an insidious agenda.
Whoever wrote this has an extremely outdated technical understanding of renewables and energy storage… or wants to push this outdated understanding out of an economic interest/agenda.
Yes, a stable AC grid needs inertia, which was historically only provided by the generators in gas, coal and nuclear power plants. Yes, inverter-connected systems like batteries and PV plants don’t provide inertia naturally. But there are control algorithms out there which would enable these systems to provide inertia just as well… And they could be going into large-scale rollout at least on new batteries and wind power plants within months if it was required by grid codes or incentivized by a market.
I agree that, whatever exactly happened initially, led to a disconnect of the mostly photovoltaic generation in Spain (not yet outfitted with such synthetic inertia algorithms) and the central European grid where more natural inertia was available. The high local PV surplus no longer exported to Europe led to an enormous increase in the grid frequency. The PV plants disconnected which led to a just as quick decrease of frequency and an automatic disconnect of loads - boom, the grid is dead. So far, their analysis was also what I presented to my students on Tuesday. But drawing the conclusion that renewables are bad just reveals either incompetence or an insidious agenda.