Why Clean Energy Needs a Spinning Machine

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]So this is the synchus compensator.

[00:00:03]>> Sorry, sineuous coffee maker.

[00:00:04]>> Synchous compensator.

[00:00:06]>> What was it? Syllabus commentator.

[00:00:08]>> The synchus compensator. An electrical machine. It weighs 100 tons. It's spinning round at 1500 RPM. As you can see, >> for the grid to work properly, it has to be in perfect balance. The amount of electricity being made has to match the amount being consumed second by second.

[00:00:29]If so, the voltage remains stable and everybody's happy. If not, the voltage can spike and the different parts of the grid start to disconnect to avoid being damaged.

[00:00:40]>> It goes right the way back to Isaac Newton and the first laws of motion. A thing that is in motion will remain in motion unless there is a force that acts against it. That property which I am sure even if you've forgotten you all studied in high school is called inertia.

[00:01:00]So when you have an object like a 100 ton spinning turbine it will continue spinning at that same rotation regardless of what's happening on the grid.

[00:01:11]>> And these spinning devices can be found in any traditional power plant. They're the machines that actually make the electricity. Coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, all these have big spinning rotating generators. And those machines have a lot of inertia, a lot of spinning mass.

[00:01:28]>> That inertia is like a little extra energy that the grid can tap in case of emergency.

[00:01:34]>> So say suddenly a power plant goes down.

[00:01:37]So you don't have supply and demand in balance. The spinning device notices that something's gone wrong on the grid and uses the inertia that's been built up to inject just the right amount of power to keep the grid stable. In that instant, it loses a little bit of its rotational speed and turns that energy into the electricity that the grid needs.

[00:02:01]>> And for most of the grid's history, this worked just fine.

[00:02:06]But what's happening now on the modern grid is that you're adding things like solar that have no spinning devices in them.

[00:02:13]>> Which brings us back to the silly mush cogitator.

[00:02:16]>> Synchronous compensator.

[00:02:17]>> Sorry, synchronous compensator.

[00:02:20]It's just like a spinning device you'd find in a coal or gas plant, but without the coal or gas. Add enough of these and your grid will have all the inertia it needs. Even with no fossil fuel power, >> it's providing inertia to the grid, enabling the grid to run with more renewables.