Variable renewable energy: The way of the future [Guest Editorial]

The rate of change taking place in the energy industry is truly mind-boggling. There was a time, a few decades ago, when the electric system was viewed as a technological backwater, and universities were dropping power engineering programs left and right. The industry’s problems had all been solved, or so the story went. Today, there is a shortage of trained power system engineers capable of tackling the problems of tomorrow, and schools cannot add new programs fast enough because they cannot find enough trained faculty. What happened in the intervening time?