by Jason Doering of oHmLand, December 9, 2025
We Were Trying to Help
With the benefit of hindsight, one of mistakes we made in the power industry with renewable energy was to allow wind and solar generators to connect to the bulk power system with reduced technical requirements relative to conventional synchronous generators. Renewables were allowed to connect without the basic minimum technical requirements we had expected from generators for over a century: to be dispatchable by system controllers, to provide real power, to provide reactive power, and to provide frequency support. This was the industry’s well-intended attempt to remove “barriers to entry” for renewables to enable and accelerate their development.
We knew inverter-based generators didn’t provide reactive power or inertia and were not dispatchable like conventional synchronous steam, gas-fired, and hydroelectric generators, but we (myself included) assumed that this would only be a deficiency for the first generation of renewables and that these operationally critical technical attributes would be developed over time if renewables were to become a material part of the power system. We thought that this compromise to get the ball rolling would provide the time and technical impetus to develop robust new power sources that would provide the full suite of AC power system requirements in the long term and diversify our available generating resources.
But We Ended up Creating Big Problems
But we were wrong. Soon after the introduction of renewables to the bulk power system, there was a frenzy of government climate change policies that incentivized the rapid build out of a technology that still required more development to become a suitable replacement for coal and gas-fired generation. Politicians and policy makers didn’t understand the physics of power generation and were urged on by proponents of renewables and an equally uninformed public and they simply assumed that renewables could replace coal and gas-fired generators and decarbonize the power system with cheap, abundant, emissions-free, guilt-free electricity. The result was the rapid proliferation of non-dispatchable generators that did not provide reactive power or frequency support. And today we are seeing the negative operational outcomes – declining reliability, high variability, and increasing fragility in all market-based power systems.
Reactive power deficiencies are causing voltage control and stability challenges. Declining levels of system inertia are causing frequency control and contingency management challenges. And the inability to dispatch renewables is creating challenges balancing supply and demand and increasing the need for dispatchable fast-ramping resources. And the unfortunate reality is that these are problems we created by compromising on the essential characteristics our AC power systems require to operate reliably. In hindsight, the requirements for generators to be dispatchable, provide reactive power, and provide frequency support are not “barriers to entry”. They are the minimum acceptable participation requirements we need to ensure our power systems continue to be available, reliable, and operable.
Read the full article here.
Wind Concerns is a collaboration of citizens of the Lakeland Alberta region against proposed wind turbine projects.