Renewable Energy in Practice

Lab Brief #3

🎯 Your mission

Run the experiment. Find out what really happens.

⚡ The twist

Nature loves to surprise the careful watcher.

What you'll learn

Solar and wind generate cleanly but only when the sun shines or the wind blows. Matching supply to demand needs storage, interconnection or backup generation, which is why the engineering problem is a whole-system one, not a single-device one.

Key words

intermittent supply
Generation available only at some times, such as solar at midday.
grid storage
Stored energy released when generation falls short of demand.

Make a hypothesis first

Before you start: write down what you think will happen, and why.

Say your guess out loud — then find out if you were right.

Get ready

🧰 What you need

card
pencil
small motor
voltmeter
electric fan
tape

Get ready

⚠️ Safety first

Keep fingers and hair clear of the fan blades.
Use the motor as a generator only — do not connect it to mains.

Step 1 of 4 · Read

Think about what you just learned: say what "intermittent supply" and "grid storage" mean in your own words before you start.

Step 2 of 4 · Do

Build a small wind turbine from card blades on a pencil axle and measure how the voltage from a small motor changes with fan distance. Plot output against distance and relate the shape to real wind farm siting.

Step 3 of 4 · Observe

Record what actually happened, including anything that did not match what you expected.

Step 4 of 4 · Record

Write a conclusion that answers the question this lesson opened with, and state your uncertainty.

Question 1 of 2

The main engineering challenge with solar and wind is that supply is:

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Question 2 of 2

Grid storage exists to:

How sure are you?😐 maybe

Mind = blown

🔬 The more you look, the more nature shows you.

Nice work!

You got 0 of 2 right.

Next: Building a Model of a System All lessons

🎯

Next Smart Experiment

We'll pick an experiment that matches exactly how you're thinking right now.

✨ More to explore

🌍 Where you see this in real life: This shows up in your everyday life more than you'd think.

🏆 Stretch challenge (try it this week): Try one experiment in real life this week — even a tiny one.

👨‍👩‍👧 For the dinner table: “What's the most surprising thing you learned today?”

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