The asynchronous generator: Mirage in electrical engineering

The squirrel-cage asynchronous generator apparently offers many advantages; for example, high efficiency, a quickly damped short-circuit current, economy, reliability, and sparsity of related apparatus for regulation, control, and protection. It demands a large supply of reactive power, which can only be satisfied by the charging current of the power system with difficulty, because of the conditions to be met. There is, however, no great trouble in solving the problem, and preventing the danger of self-excitation; furthermore, all of the authors who have treated the subject are unanimously optimistic about it. This, together with the fact that the first suggestion to use asynchronous generators dates back to 1893, prompted the author to find out why only small quantities of them, of very small power ratings, have been installed in the world. The reasons are to be found in the phenomena which appear after a short-circuit in the power system, which justify the exclusive use of synchronous generators.