Lack of "Inertia" is bullshit: it was a systematic design failure of the control systems for the network. There was plenty of supply, however the control system was designed to fail.
When new supply is added to a network, the network needs to be designed to remain stable and reliable, even after fault conditions or if the network degrades into islands. Invertors can be programmed to simulate inertia.
If your network stability is designed to depend upon a single frequency signal, then make sure that all the parts of the network are working together in harmony. Or find another channel to control the power supplied by generators to balance it stabily and reliably.
The failure was a network design fault. Basically due to lack of central planning to deal with a well known issue: duhhhh.
Now the network designers have to fix it. I'm guessing by designing better control systems to manage balancing power generators.
Very large invertor systems will be software controlled, so some of the updates could be mostly software (once a stable control system is decided upon).
I'm looking forward to seeing a good analysis of the causes (although any report is likely to be whitewashed, assuming the report is written by the same organisation that allowed the failure in the first place).
bell-cot · 18h ago
Isn't Reason Magazine supposed to be libertarian?
From the article, it sounds like they're fans of Big Government, Zealous Regulation, and Central Planning.
derbOac · 17h ago
Ostensibly they're arguing the problem is government-mandated use of renewables and regulation to mandate that use in real time, rather than based on physical need or prudence. Not agreeing or disagreeing with them, just that's how I interpreted it.
Reason has been a little counterintuitive lately at times about energy policy. I think not too long ago they had an article basically arguing that the market is moving to renewables and that attempts by the Trump administration to push coal and so forth was bad policy as a result. That's not really at odds with libertarian principles, but I think depending on your assumptions about why certain things are the way they are, you can end up with different conclusions.
onecommentman · 15h ago
One person’s “counterintuitive” is another person’s “nuanced”. I’d go with nuanced. For issues as fundamental to modern life as energy, the simple broad brush ideological answer is rarely the right one. You have to get it right for everybody, independent of what the voices (mostly in your own head) are telling you.
When new supply is added to a network, the network needs to be designed to remain stable and reliable, even after fault conditions or if the network degrades into islands. Invertors can be programmed to simulate inertia.
If your network stability is designed to depend upon a single frequency signal, then make sure that all the parts of the network are working together in harmony. Or find another channel to control the power supplied by generators to balance it stabily and reliably.
The failure was a network design fault. Basically due to lack of central planning to deal with a well known issue: duhhhh.
Now the network designers have to fix it. I'm guessing by designing better control systems to manage balancing power generators.
Very large invertor systems will be software controlled, so some of the updates could be mostly software (once a stable control system is decided upon).
I'm looking forward to seeing a good analysis of the causes (although any report is likely to be whitewashed, assuming the report is written by the same organisation that allowed the failure in the first place).
From the article, it sounds like they're fans of Big Government, Zealous Regulation, and Central Planning.
Reason has been a little counterintuitive lately at times about energy policy. I think not too long ago they had an article basically arguing that the market is moving to renewables and that attempts by the Trump administration to push coal and so forth was bad policy as a result. That's not really at odds with libertarian principles, but I think depending on your assumptions about why certain things are the way they are, you can end up with different conclusions.