order to maintain fast response capability to transient load requirements it can be desirable to keep one or more gasifiers 120 at hot idle so that they can ramp quickly to produce large quantities of combustible gasses when needed this can be accomplished by turning off their corresponding engines and holding them at low flow rates as described in mode c as an alternative control scheme they may be pulsed between high and low flow levels using the same technique mode e comprises peak power generation if the system engines incorporate modern electronic ignition controls they can be configured to rapidly start and run in a fashion similar to the start stop operation of many late model cars that turn their engines off at stoplights and start very quickly when the throttle is applied thus the engines can ramp much faster than the gasifiers 120 however operating gasifiers have substantial filter volumes filled with combustible gasses such that one or more engines running at full power can contribute a small amount of gas from their filter tanks to other engines without substantially reducing their power output in this mode of operation valve 2 160 is opened on one or more systems operating at power and valves 2 3 and 4 160 165 170 are opened with valve 1 155 closed on additional systems which are currently in the off state to provide rapid transient power response in some embodiments multi mode operation is employed as would be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art of networking topology multiple modes of operation are possible particularly in a large array of systems without departing from the scope of the present invention in such systems attention must be paid to the complexity of the interconnecting bus lines fig3 is a.