Renewable electricity has been expensive compared to conventional electricity.
February 2022
Renewable electricity has been expensive compared to conventional electricity, making it dependent on incentives and subsidies.
Following technological advances, wind and solar are becoming economically competitive.
Renewable projects are now starting to compete with conventional power, proving they can replace conventional power in many countries.
Wind repowering is defined as replacing older wind turbines with new wind turbines before the end of the old turbines’ lifetime.
The new turbines are much more efficient and more powerful; they use the wind in an optimal manner and can provide high yields with better capacity factors.
Since 2017, there has been a lot of consolidation in the wind power industry, especially among the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
A significant example of this was the merger of Siemens and Gamesa to form a single company – Siemens Gamesa.European manufacturers have been expanding into markets that have traditionally been dominated by local players. Where necessary they have been forming joint ventures with the local players either for compliance or for synergy in that particular market.
Higher wind turbine towers and longer blades increase capacity and electricity generated per turbine. Costs also decrease on a per megawatt (MW) basis. With increasing technological competence, larger turbines are being manufactured and more developers are opting to install these lager turbines. Offshore wind has been particularly growing. GE has recently built the world’s longest wind turbine blade – Halidade-X 12MW offshore turbine – featuring a 107m blade and 220m rotor.
The longer a rotor blade is, the more wind a turbine can harness and convert to electricity. The production of longer blades involves advanced structural designs and the use of complex composite materials.
The longer a rotor blade is, the more wind a turbine can harness and convert to electricity. The production of longer blades involves advanced structural designs and the use of complex composite materials.
New technological advancements are being seen in the operation and maintenance (O&M) activities of wind farms. Drones with HD cameras and thermal cameras are now solving a number of issues that wind equipment managers faced for years.
Drones provide high-definition images and video footage of each wind turbine from the air to inspect damages and thermal imaging to detect any internal abnormalities.
Offshore wind power is going through a phase of transformative improvement. To tap higher wind speeds, developers are installing much larger turbines farther into the sea in deeper waters.
Turbines that can handle faster winds, is unrestrained by the depth of water, and involves a support structure that can accommodate the increasing wind turbine size is the holy grail being sought after.
The rising share of renewable energy sources has necessitated the need for adoption of battery energy storage systems (BESS) technology.
Intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power with significant peaks and troughs require energy storage for smooth output and to reduce ramp rates for medium and large power plants.
Several city and province level governments have been pushing regulations that mandate a certain amount of roof space and other parts of a building to be used for solar power installations.
A number of solar PV applications are now coming into play such as solar roadways, space-based solar power and hybrid power plants.
Solar roadways are modular systems involving specially engineered solar panels on which one can walk and drive. Space-based solar power is where satellites in Earth’s orbit capture the radiation of the sun, and then convert it into electricity.
In hybrid power plants, solar PV is effectively combined with other technology to gain cost-effectiveness and higher power generation.
Modern technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and blockchain are being adopted by the power industry especially by utilities and power system companies.
AI and ML have an important role to play in improving demand predictions, generation predictions from non-dispatchable resources like wind and solar and wholesale price predictions.
Blockchain is being used by utilities to create and maintain peer-to-peer electricity trading platforms.
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