Monday, April 28, 2025

The machine stops

The Hispania is relearning the value of warehousing power. Ed Conway is pointing us back to his 2023 thread on (rotational) Inertia; we can also read this 2021 warning (pdf). A few years ago the ridiculous fakers running Texas had switched to wind and when their blades didn't spin, their power went out. Apparently they don't speak Mexican in Spain. The accent I suppose.

To their credit, some of the Just-Stop-Oil guys have been aware that a muh-renewables grid is an Agile, J-I-T grid. Hence Casey Handmer's insistence on batteries of capacitors and power-cells. The old steampunk way was just to store this in big heavy spinning things - like turbines, which is kinda how coal works. Nuclear is also, infamously, a power source you have to keep running once you start or else. The spin can't go below 49.5 Hz in Europe or most of Japan, or - Nightfall.

What I didn't know, and Conway teaches, is that some grids even have turbines as run as a strategic-reserve. Top up energy from time to time; extract if there's a Problem.

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