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Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

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353 points dmazin | 1 comments | 09 Jul 25 12:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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markus_zhang ◴[10 Jul 25 10:32 UTC] No.44519407[source]▶
I recall that other power plants such as thermal power is still required to provide “inertia” for the whole system, as solar fluctuates a lot. The recent Spain-Portugal outage showed that there is not enough inertia in the system.

I don’t really understand inertia in power plants but I wonder if it helps to push nuclear as primary and solar as secondary?

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1. cinntaile ◴[10 Jul 25 10:40 UTC] No.44519460[source]▶
The more likely future imo is different forms of dedicated inertia rather than inertia that you used to automatically get from old school power plants with big turbines. Both will coexist of course. Financial incentives for different support systems for electrical grids will continue to evolve in the foreseeable future.