A tough assignment, but Daryl has the right idea. A company I used to work for did large off grid systems and would use something they called a rotary capacitor (or something like that). It was a large induction motor paralleled into the grid. It had a DC pony motor and some synchro hardware/software. The DC motor would run it up to synchronous speed and the contactors would bring it online. It would just sit there idling, drawing just enough to overcome friction and windage. When some big reactive load hit the grid it would smooth out the wobble in the waveform.
If the functional motor in question doesn’t start under load, you might consider a DC pony motor to bring it up to synchro RPM before closing the main contactors. Good luck! Hilton Dier III Renewable Energy Design Missisquoi River Hydro LLC _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Redwood Alliance List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Change listserver email address & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out or update participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org