Renewable technologies of the future

Although the growing awareness of governments and societies of the climate crisis has played an undeniable role in creating the right conditions for the development of renewable energies, it should not be forgotten that their spectacular growth in recent years would not have been possible without the great technological improvements that have boosted their competitiveness.

In particular, this technological development has been most notable in the case of wind energy and solar photovoltaics, catapulting them to the point where they are now the cheapest forms of electricity production.

The good news is that both technologies still have a long way to go to further improve their efficiency and reduce costs, so in the coming years we will continue to see important innovations, as we will see very briefly in this article, which will consolidate their leading role in the energy sector of the future.

Onshore wind energy

• The main driver for making onshore wind power even more competitive will continue to be the increase in the size of wind turbines, which will allow further progress in reducing cost and increasing output per kW installed, as taller machines take advantage of the increase in wind speed as the height above ground increases.
• This increase in size will mean that components such as the blades and the tower will reach dimensions that will require the application of new solutions to make their transport and installation viable, with the widespread use of hybrid concrete-steel tower blades.
• There will also be significant advances in the use of lighter and stronger materials for the blades, which will reduce the loads on the rest of the structural elements, in turn reducing their weight and the cost of the whole assembly.
• The expected annual installed capacity figures for the coming years, which are also concentrated in the hands of a few dominant technologists, will lead to component manufacturing volumes that will encourage the development of standardisation and modularity strategies, thus optimising costs[1].
• The size of wind turbines will allow for increased investment in instrumentation equipment, control systems and more sophisticated and powerful drives. These will be able to optimise the behaviour of turbines in complex interactions with the wind, reducing the loads on structural components (and therefore their cost) and increasing energy efficiency. For example, the use of LIDAR, an instrument that makes it possible to detect in advance the wind gusts that are approaching the wind turbine, so that its operating parameters can be adjusted to avoid peak loads that could reduce the lifetime of the components, will become widespread.
• Finally, new solutions will be developed and others that are already being implemented will be improved in order to optimise the installation and maintenance of these giants, such as authorisation systems[1], cranes that “climb” the towers[2], robots and drones that inspect and maintain towers and blades[3], etc.

Offshore wind energy

In addition to benefiting from all the advances mentioned for onshore wind, we will see specific technological developments in this type of installation, such as:

• Advanced floating solutions, which will allow wind farms to be installed in deep waters, such as those off the Spanish coast, considerably increasing the number of potential sites.
• Optimisation of the installation of wind turbines and their foundations[1], a much more important chapter in the overall cost of this type of project than onshore wind.
• Development of advanced predictive maintenance solutions and reduction of corrective maintenance needs, as access for technicians to these facilities is much more complicated than on the ground, and may even be impossible during certain times of the year.

Photovoltaic solar energy

• Bifacial panel technology will be consolidated, which is already proving to increase production by more than 10%, and up to 35% in installations with single-axis tracking, taking advantage of the radiation reflected by the ground (albedo).
• Efficiency will also be improved by increasing cell size and advances in cell-to-cell connection (tiling ribbon technology, shingle panels, etc.).
• In the medium term, more disruptive technologies such as perovskite cells[1], which use a family of materials other than silicon, but which are also abundant, are generating much excitement and are already achieving very high efficiencies on an experimental level, with the advantage of being able to manufacture solar cells on flexible materials, which would multiply their applications. One particularly interesting option is to create “tandem cells”, in which a perovskite cell is placed on top of a silicon cell, allowing a wider range of light wavelengths to be used, which would significantly increase the efficiency of the modules.

ll these advances will make solar photovoltaic and wind energy even more competitive in the coming years, increasing their advantage over other generation options. Combined with the abundance of the resource they use and its renewable nature, it seems clear that these energy sources will dominate electricity production in the future.

However, challenges remain that will also require developments in other energy technologies:

On the one hand, electricity currently accounts for only around 20% of energy consumption, and a breakthrough in electrification is needed to achieve a sustainable and affordable energy future for the planet, particularly in the transport sector, but also in industrial, commercial and residential uses.

On the other hand, despite the high degree of complementarity between solar and wind energy, their intermittent and unmanageable nature makes it essential to have complementary energy alternatives to ensure supply at all times. In order to respond to this last challenge, it will be essential to make progress in energy storage technologies, which will be precisely the subject of our blog in the year that is about to begin.