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A comment on Solar meets 100 percent of South Australia demand for first time. Parent comment

Re:Solar meets 100 percent of South Australia demand for fir... by vvll on Monday October 12, 2020 @08:45PM (#24761185)
Inertia is how well a system responds to a change in frequency.

For example, if a large amount of loads switch off, the system frequency decreases. In response to this, synchronous generators will produce more power to bring the frequency back to normal. This is as a result of the big spinning mass in the generator that wants to maintain its rate of rotation.

Synthetic inertia involves configuring control loops in the battery inverters to cause them to have a similar response to a synchronous generator. The bonus is that you can tune this control as much as you like depending on grid conditions.

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Re:Solar meets 100 percent of South Australia demand for fir... by thisrod on Monday October 12, 2020 @09:19PM (#24761346)
> Synthetic inertia involves configuring control loops in the battery inverters to cause them to have a similar response to a synchronous generator.

So you get a clock, monitor the grid, calculate the current that would be drawn from a short-circuited dynamo right now, and get the inverter to generate that current, all within a few microseconds, and without setting the battery on fire? I'm impressed.

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Re:Solar meets 100 percent of South Australia demand for fir... by toomuchtodo on Monday October 12, 2020 @09:31PM (#24761414)
Mostly.

https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2020/renewables-rescue-st...

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73207.pdf

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Re:Solar meets 100 percent of South Australia demand for fir... by vvll on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @03:01AM (#24763017)
Just to add on to this, here's a good talk that goes through the basics of VSGs (Virtual Synchronous Generators) and how they work.

https://youtu.be/2BHbUPDxwJc?t=668

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