[jacquesm]

Yes, but the rest of the grid can not, except for some forms of hydro, flywheels, superconducting coils and grid scale batteries. They hydro has a fastest rate of change of about 1 minute from zero to full load and a bit slower to go back again and batteries can more-or-less match renewables for rate of change. The superconductor solution is the fastest but also the most expensive per KWh of storage.

In the time before renewables all of the rate-of-change limitations came from sudden increases or decreases in consumption, never from the supply side and this has subtle implications for the structure of the power grid and how much power companies can do to control the match between the two.

Think of it as a person walking across a rope with a balancing pole: you can overbalance for a short while because you can correct for that with the mass of the pole. But if the overbalance is too large for the mass of the pole then you will inevitably fall (brownout, blackout).

[fmajid]

"Superconductor solution": did you mean "supercapacitor solution"?

[jacquesm]

No, superconductor. Effectively an electronic version of the flywheel.

There is a company in the United States that has been making these for almost 20 years now, they are used for ride-through in hospitals and for windfarm output stabilization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnetic_energ...

https://www.amsc.com/gridtec/renewable-interconnectivity-sol...

Enjoy the read. It's interesting stuff.

[fmajid]

It is indeed, but the refrigeration needed would seem cumbersome for most applications.

[jacquesm]

Not really, I've seen these units in the middle of the mountains sitting right next to a windfarm. About as inaccessible as it gets and yet they were there and humming along. Note that there is plenty of energy available for the refrigeration and that those units run for years unattended. Occasionally you need to top off the refrigeration gear but that's once every two years or so, a bit more involved than your average HVAC setup but not that much more involved.

[Enogoloyo]

Yes but we will get much more grid scale batteries anyway