Alternative Energy Can Be Unpredictable

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

March 12, 2012 | 12:55 PM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A Cambria County wind farm

Alternative energy sources have their positives, but as NPR reported this morning, the more an energy grid utilizes wind, solar and other unconventional forms of energy, the tougher it is to control and maintain the supply:

Electricity has to keep flowing all the time. Grid operators constantly match what power plants are producing with what people and their TVs, microwaves and air conditioners need. It’s the world’s biggest balancing act.
That’s doable largely because big power plants run almost constantly and produce a predictable amount of electricity.
So what happens when you add in unpredictable sources of electricity, like wind or solar power?
“The operator does not have control of when to turn it on and off,” Moniz says. “It’s a new challenge that we just have to meet, and we’re not doing it at anything like the pace that I think we need.”
That’s the conclusion of a study that Moniz’s group at MIT is issuing Monday. It’s all about how the grid must change to handle the fickle flow of electrons from renewable energy.