Renewable energy resources such as solar and wind, produce power in a manner that generally does not contribute to frequency control of interconnected power systems. For wind turbines, the reason for this is that the generators used to convert wind to electric energy have small inertias that dissipate rotational energy more readily than conventional steam turbines. Also, wind turbines are operated such as to generate optimal power from the available wind, and hence do not have much spinning reserve. For inverter-based solar generation, the solid-state controls have no rotating component at all. (Solar thermal power is usually produced with synchronous generators and thus contribute to frequency control as most thermal-type power plants are able to do.)

However, both wind turbines and solar inverters have the important characteristic of fast, programmable controls. The question then comes up: Is it possible for these power sources to participate in frequency control response of interconnections? This is an intriguing question that merits some further investigation.