Spinning metal is just one way to store energy. As long as you have:

• an energy storage system, and
• a quickly-responding means to couple it to the grid,

you got the Schwungmasse. It's considered synthetic when the energy isn't stored in angular momentum. So, a battery storage plant would be a synthetic Schwungmasse.

So would be a solar plant running under-capacity, since its inverters can react very quickly to changes in demand.

In principle, renewable energy is not a problem in itself - but its high utilization is. A solar plant running at 50% capacity may not be very economical to operate, but it sure has quite a bit of equivalent Schwungmasse as it can double its output on the scale of one half-cycle.

With renewable sources running at full capacity, their equivalent Schwungmasse is zero, more-or-less. That's the source of the problem. A thermal plant running at full capacity has same Schwungmasse as an idle one, since the stored angular momentum does not depend on the load at all. It's constant.

This is the fundamental difference between plants with rotating generators, and those without them. A rotating generator and turbine provide a constant Schwungmasse at all times. The Schwungmasse of a wind or solar plant is maximum at no load, and zero at full load, approximately speaking.

Spinning metal is just one way to store energy. As long as you have:

• an energy storage system, and
• a quickly-responding means to couple it to the grid,

you got the Schwungmasse. It's considered synthetic when the energy isn't stored in angular momentum. So, a battery storage plant would be a synthetic Schwungmasse. It would be so, to an extent, even at full load, since batteries and inverters can take momentary overloads if they are designed for it.

So would be a solar plant running under-capacity, since its inverters can react very quickly to changes in demand.

In principle, renewable energy is not a problem in itself - but its high utilization is. A solar plant running at 50% capacity may not be very economical to operate, but it sure has quite a bit of equivalent Schwungmasse as it can double its output on the scale of one half-cycle.

With renewable sources running at full capacity, their equivalent Schwungmasse is zero, more-or-less. That's the source of the problem. A thermal plant running at full capacity has same Schwungmasse as an idle one, since the stored angular momentum does not depend on the load at all. It's constant.

This is the fundamental difference between plants with rotating generators, and those without them. A rotating generator and turbine provide a constant Schwungmasse at all times. The Schwungmasse of a wind or solar plant is maximum at no load, and zero at full load, approximately speaking.

A wind turbine has some Schwungmasse at all times as well. The machinery in the nacelle has to be light so there's not much margin left when running at full load. Thus the turbine controller will keep the load limited to 100% or close to it, even if with sufficient overbuilding, it could output 500% for one turbine revolution for example.

Spinning metal is just one way to store energy. As long as you have:

• an energy storage system, and
• a quickly-responding means to couple it to the grid,

you got the Schwungmasse. It's considered synthetic when the energy isn't stored in angular momentum. So, a battery storage plant would be a synthetic Schwungmasse.

So would be a solar plant running under-capacity, since its inverters can react very quickly to changes in demand.

In principle, renewable energy is not a problem in itself - but its high utilization is. A solar plant running at 50% capacity may not be very economical to operate, but it sure has quite a bit of equivalent Schwungmasse as it can double its output on the scale of one half-cycle.

With renewable sources running at full capacity, their equivalent Schwungmasse is zero, more-or-less. That's the source of the problem. A thermal plant running at full capacity has same Schwungmasse as an idle one, since the stored angular momentum does not depend on the load at all. It's constant.

Spinning metal is just one way to store energy. As long as you have:

• an energy storage system, and
• a quickly-responding means to couple it to the grid,

you got the Schwungmasse. It's considered synthetic when the energy isn't stored in angular momentum. So, a battery storage plant would be a synthetic Schwungmasse.

So would be a solar plant running under-capacity, since its inverters can react very quickly to changes in demand.

In principle, renewable energy is not a problem in itself - but its high utilization is. A solar plant running at 50% capacity may not be very economical to operate, but it sure has quite a bit of equivalent Schwungmasse as it can double its output on the scale of one half-cycle.

With renewable sources running at full capacity, their equivalent Schwungmasse is zero, more-or-less. That's the source of the problem. A thermal plant running at full capacity has same Schwungmasse as an idle one, since the stored angular momentum does not depend on the load at all. It's constant.

This is the fundamental difference between plants with rotating generators, and those without them. A rotating generator and turbine provide a constant Schwungmasse at all times. The Schwungmasse of a wind or solar plant is maximum at no load, and zero at full load, approximately speaking.