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•8mo ago
From the article, it sounds like they're fans of Big Government, Zealous Regulation, and Central Planning.
derbOac•8mo ago
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•8mo ago