Getting the most out of tomorrow’s grid requires digitisation and demand response

Frequencies matter. When a singer misses a note, a choir’s harmony can be ruined. When an electric grid wobbles around off key, equipment attached to it can be badly damaged. Worries about the fluctuations that renewables might bring with them in the frequency at which an electrical grid operates (50 hertz, or cycles a second, in most of the world, 60 hertz in much of the Americas and a few parts of Asia) have caused grid operators to be leery of renewable energy.