Load Following With A Burner

Dispatchable service means moving output up and down on command; the burner's ramp is limited by plasma control rather than by boiler thermal inertia.

Following demand

Load following is the ability to change output to track demand minute by minute. Steam plants ramp slowly because large metal masses and boilers cannot heat and cool quickly without fatigue. The burner (MetroVolt) has no steam cycle: direct energy conversion turns charged particles into electricity with little thermal mass in the conversion path, so in principle the electrical output can be trimmed by adjusting fuelling and plasma parameters.

Design-stage control levers include fuelling rate, heating power to the plug and central cell, and the bias on the DEC collector stages. Each changes the balance between fusion power produced and power extracted. The control problem is coupling these without disturbing confinement.

Limits and unknowns

Fast load following is a design aspiration, not a demonstrated ramp rate. Because the plug regime is 166 to 830 times beyond experiment, the true stable operating band, and how quickly output can be moved within it without losing the burn, are open questions. Deep, fast turndown may trade against confinement margin.

Honest position: MetroVolt is designed to be dispatchable, and DEC removes the thermal-inertia limit that slows steam plants. Whether the plasma will tolerate rapid, repeated dispatch is exactly what the 2032 test unit must show.