How to power Pacific islands

YOUR LATESTW electricity bill may have been a rude shock. But chances are it is way less than the bills facing inhabitants of remote islands such as those of the Federated States of Micronesia. In that country, an archipelago of just over 600 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, the residential rate per kh is about three times the norm in America.Small Pacific islands generally rely on diesel generators. Connecting them to grids is too expensive. Solar power takes up too much space. And wind turbines are not designed to withstand the hurricanes that sometimes blow through. But, as Matt Lewis of Bangor University, in Britain, told this year’s Ocean Sciences Meeting (held virtually) on February 28th, the answer may lie in the very geography of the islands themselves.