alt Hacker News> turbines slow down momentarily before accelerating back to their original rotational speed. This increases wear and tear.
Why though? Due to increased torque?
Replies
Because a variation in force is a cycle of stress, which is more destructive than constant force. It's called hysteresis, leading to material fatigue.
When the battery storage systems all temporarily pause providing grid inertia due to the state of charge check they’re performing, grid synchronized spinning mass has to compensate, which slows it down (transferring the kinetic energy to electrical energy), and then is sped back up as battery storage resumes inertia support.
Broadly speaking, it’s a collective momentum problem. If part of the system inertia sags, another part needs to step in to compensate for the inertia loss, otherwise you have brownouts and eventually, a blackout.
Stuxnet damaged gas centrifuges by introducing a subtle change in rotational speed over time, eventually the motors failed mechanically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet