Yet Another Reason Why Wind And Solar Electricity Generation Will Never Work To Run An Economy

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.