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Renewable energy: Will the lights stay on?

Pictures of spreads from New Scientist magazine

IN A laboratory in Italy, 100 fridges sit quietly monitoring their electricity supply. It's an odd thing for fridges to do, but these are no ordinary fridges. They are part of an experiment that, if successful, could transform the reliability of supplying electricity from renewable sources.

One of the key problems with renewables is their intermittent availability. You can only generate energy from the wind when it is blowing, or from the sun when it's shining. Critics argue this is why we will never be able to rely on renewables for the majority of our electricity generation. But that criticism may soon be silenced. Researchers are developing new ways to balance supply and demand so that interruptions to the supply at a power station are unnoticeable to the consumer.

For example, the idea behind the fridge experiment exploits the peculiar way the power grid responds when demand exceeds supply. In ...



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