In every decade before Net Zero mania took hold, the electricity grid was understood as a system. A synchronous AC system built on simple principles: large rotating generators—coal, gas, nuclear, hydro—all spinning at 3,000rpm, producing power while naturally stabilising the entire grid.
The physics was elegant.The engineering was proven.And the stability was free.
These machines didn’t just generate electricity—they were the grid. Their inertia damped shocks, their fault current kept protection systems alive, and their voltage stability held the network together. Nobody had to think about “system strength”, “synthetic inertia”, “grid-forming inverters”, or “voltage ride-through curves”. The power system simply worked.
And then government decided to “innovate”.
We didn’t upgrade what we had. We dismantled it.
Under the banner of Net Zero, policymakers set out to remove the very components that made the grid stable. Coal was closed. Gas was demonised. Nuclear was stalled. Hydropower was ignored.
The engineers who built the system were sidelined, and replaced by activists with PowerPoint slides.The result?
The physical backbone of the grid—big spinning synchronous generators—was torn out before anything remotely capable of replacing their stabilising effects existed.
This wasn’t an upgrade.It was surgery performed by people who didn’t believe anatomy mattered.And now?
We’re told the solution is… spinning machines. Again.
Take the latest example from Australia, where engineers proudly unveiled a 150-tonne “synchronous condenser” in Victoria. The media celebrated this enormous whirling steel machine as a breakthrough for the renewable future.
But what is a synchronous condenser?It is exactly this: A synchronous generator with the turbine removed.In other words, the same machine we shut down—rebuilt to spin but not produce any electricity.
This is the absurdity at the heart of modern energy policy.
We are spending billions across the UK, Australia, Europe and the US to purchase artificial imitations of things the old system gave us for free.
The old system produced three critical things:
1. Electricity
2. Inertia (frequency stability)
3. Fault current (protection, voltage strength, resilience)
Under Net Zero thinking, government shut down the machines that gave us all three.To compensate, they now buy:batteries for frequency response
syncons for inertia
STATCOMS for voltage control
synchronous compensators for fault level
new protection systems to handle weaker grids
new control rooms to manage instability and £100bn+ of new transmission just to hold it all together
This is not progress.This is the most expensive rebuild of the same principles ever attempted, only without the benefit of reliable generation.
It’s like demolishing a perfectly good house, then rebuilding the garage and claiming it’s an upgrade.
Worse: the rebuilt garage doesn’t produce heat, light, or power—just stability. Meanwhile, you’re told to buy electric radiators and solar panels to make the house “net zero compliant.”If a child proposed this, you’d gently explain the flaw.If an adult proposed this, you’d question their understanding.If a government does it, it becomes policy.
The fundamental stupidity of building syncons is this:
We are spending huge amounts of money to buy back the stability we already had before politicians destroyed it.
In the UK:The coal fleet was closed before replacements existed
Nuclear was allowed to age out
Gas is restricted by ideology And now National Grid is spending billions on “system stability services” to fix the mess
In Australia, the Guardian reports:$137m AUD per synchronous condenser,Up to 40 machines needed in a renewable-dominated system.Forty machines that already existed inside every coal, gas, and hydro plant.You couldn’t design a more wasteful, circular, intelligence-insulting process if you tried.
The generators are gone—but the need for the physics remains.Frequency still needs inertia.Voltage still needs support.Fault levels still need strength.The AC grid still wants to be an AC grid.
Nature didn’t rewrite the laws of electricity because a politician declared a carbon target.
So instead of admitting this, governments are now:
building imitation synchronous machines
inventing “synthetic inertia”
inventing “grid-forming inverters”
imposing new stability markets and forcing consumers to pay the bill
All because they dismantled the working system without thinking about how it worked.
This is not a transition. This is deconstruction disguised as progress.
A genuine transition strengthens what exists, builds on proven engineering, and ensures reliability.
Instead, we did the opposite.We dismantled what worked, then threw money at incomplete replacements.
If a hospital replaced surgeons with influencers and then blamed the patients for dying, we’d shut the hospital down.
But in energy policy, this behaviour is seen as leadership.There is a smarter path
If you want stability, you need synchronous machines.If you want synchronous machines, you need generators—gas, nuclear, hydro, or advanced turbines.Instead of spending billions on syncons, we could simply:
Build SMRs
Build new gas plants
Refit existing turbines
Keep synchronous AC backbone intact
Real generation gives real inertia and real resilience.Artificial inertia gives nothing but bills.**A nation that understands engineering builds a future.A nation that ignores engineering builds excuses.**We are now spending fortunes rebuilding the skeleton of the system we dismantled—only worse, weaker, and more unstable.That is the stupidity at the heart of modern energy policy.And every household is paying for it.
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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