This article was originally published as part of the PEI print edition in Smart Energy International Issue 3-2020. Read the full PEI section here, the full combined digimag here or subscribe to receive a print copy here.

The question of how to get the most out of your assets is one that is high on the list of priorities for companies around the globe. In the renewable energy sector, this question is equally important to the companies monitoring and controlling renewable energy generation plants.

The last decade however has seen the technology come into its own, overcoming the challenges posed in years past, and opening the door to predictable, perpetual, efficient clean energy in an exciting new market.

2019 was the year in which wave energy finally showed its mettle. There have been numerous challenges to overcome ” the cost to benefit ratio being arguably chief among them.

The biggest detractors from the value side of the equation?

If you said efficiency, you’d be wrong. Wave energy boasts the highest efficiency rating of any renewable energy source. The problem has always been capacity. That has changed.

According to the International Energy Agency’s global marine energy technology initiative Ocean Energy Systems, the deployment of tidal and wave energy systems grew from just 5 GWh to over 45 GWh between 2009 and 2019.

With current technologies capable of producing as much as 1,400 TWh per year, almost 9% of the currently estimated 16,000 TWh of electricity consumed globally, wave energy could supply a substantial part of the electricity demand of several European countries. These include the UK, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. Beyond Europe, the US and China have taken the most noteworthy steps in embracing the technology, which can bridge a considerable part of the massive gap in clean energy capacity still required to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.

What’s even more exciting, however, is that these technologies are just on the point of maturing, and 2019 saw a spike in investments to help the resource tap into its potential.

Current technologies:

Five main system-types dominate the current market:

ࢀ¢ A terminator, often a paddle-like device placed perpendicular to the main direction of the wave;

ࢀ¢ an oscillating water column which generates electricity from the wave heave pressure effect in a shaft;

ࢀ¢ a point-absorber which is a floating structure that absorbs energy from all directions through its movement at or near the water’s surface;

ࢀ¢ an attenuator, like a terminator, but placed parallel to wave direction; and

ࢀ¢ overtopping devices ” a floating reservoir that is partially submerged, using wave energy to create a head of water that is used to run hydro turbines.

2019 saw six projects installed in European waters, mainly in Portugal and the UK. After passing certification in March, Finnish-based AW-Energy deployed its commercially-ready WaveRoller device in November in a location 820 metres off the coast of the Portuguese city of Peniche.

The WaveRoller converts ocean wave energy to electricity in near-shore areas (approximately 0.3 ” 2 km from the shore) at depths of between 8 and 20 metres. Fixed to the seabed, the device remains mostly or fully submerged, and a single unit has a capacity of 350 kW and 1,000 kW, at a factor of 25-50% depending on wave conditions at the project site. The technology can be deployed as single units or in farms.

As the WaveRoller panel moves and absorbs the energy from ocean waves, hydraulic piston pumps attached to the panel pump hydraulic fluids inside a sealed hydraulic circuit.

“At this phase of the installation, we are collecting data 24/7 to monitor the performance of the device using motion, pressure and strain gauge sensors that are engineered into its panel, foundation and bearings,” said Christopher Ridgewell, CEO of AW-Energy Oy at the time. Extended sea trials are allowing for fine-tuning of the system’s controls to the WaveRoller’s control to maximise performance and yield.

In the UK, Wales specifically, Swansea-based Marine Power Systems (MPS) was awarded more than €13 million in EU funding to further their WaveSub wave generation technology. The technology was invented by two Swansea University graduates, Dr Gareth Stockman and Dr Graham Foster, which led to the founding of MPS in 2008.

Then in November a second device, this time a hybrid between offshore wind power and the company’s WaveSub device, saw the company awarded a further à‚£4.3 million for development, which has the potential to make generation in deep water locations more viable.

2020 ” an eligible future

Globally, several advanced deployments and pilots are underway, with 3 MW of wave energy expected to be deployed in Europe, and a combined 1.2 GW in China, the US, and Canada expected.

The UK is set to lead in terms of new installed capacity, accompanied by Spain, with funding from the EU’s BlueGift and Ocean DEMO projects. Three new full-scale devices should hit European waters ” made by Bombora, with the fully-submerged mWave device, Wello and Wavepiston.

Outside of Europe, installations could add 1.2 MW of wave energy capacity to the global total. Several devices are expected to be deployed in China (GIEC), the USA (Columbia Power Technologies) and Australia (Wave Swell Energy).

In January, UK marine energy developer Malin Renewables won a à‚£1 million ($1.3 million) contract to supply a fifty-tonne point-type wave energy converter ” the Archimedes Waveswing designed by AWS Ocean Energy ” thanks to a funding injection by Wave Energy Scotland through its Novel Wave Energy Converter programme.

That same month, Welsh company Bombora announced that its mWave technology was on track for trial deployment by mid-2020. The mWave features a series of air-inflated rubber membranes mounted to a concrete structure on the sea floor, positioned at an angle to the incoming waves. As waves pass over the mWave, air inside the membranes is squeezed into a duct and through a turbine-driven generator, before being recycled to re-inflate the membranes ready for the next wave.

Unlike most other wave energy devices, it sits below the surface of the water, where it captures energy from the pressure of waves passing overhead ” the perfect position, its developers say, for capturing the hidden wave energy below the surface.

Locating the device below the surface also overcomes the vast majority of survivability issues like extreme weather, which has dogged previous wave energy developers.

It will be the first time a full-scale 1.5 MW device has been deployed in the ocean.

Bombora is also seeking approval for a follow up 2 MW Lanzarote Project and hopes for completion in 2022.

According to Henry Jeffrey, the chairman of Ocean Energy Systems from the University of Edinburgh: “In the last 12 months we have seen major progress with global tidal projects achieving extensive operating hours and wave technology progressing in a large-scale laboratory and offshore test sites,” he said.

“A growing range of devices is now being tested in open water with an acceleration of cross-border R&D projects supported by the European Commission.

“Ocean Energy Systems has also been working closely with the US Department of Energy, Wave Energy Scotland and the European Commission to achieve an internationally accepted approach of performance metrics for ocean energy development. This will be of high value to technology developers, investors and funders. We expect to see many more advances that are positive in 2020, with large investments being made by governments around the world.”

Though wave energy is still not able to compete fully against more mature technologies such as wind, in the medium term it will contribute significantly to energy markets close to the sea. In the longer term, wave energy could become a much more important part of the world’s energy portfolio, and it seems that the sector is finally ready to take its place at the table.

The post Tidal energy: Riding a wave of optimism appeared first on Power Engineering International.

In Portugal, Generg, which is part of the Novenergia Group, an affiliate of Total Eren (one of the renewable arms of the energy major Total), has been building and operating renewable power plants for over three decades. With a company portfolio of 660 MW in operation across Europe, and responsibility for controlling the performance of other wind farms in addition, the company runs around 800 MW of green generating assets.

This article was originally published as part of the PEI print edition in 
Smart Energy International Issue 3-2020. Read the full PEI section here,
the full combined digimag here or subscribe to receive a print copy here.

However, ambitious expansion plans have meant that the ability to control and monitor existing and new assets has gained increased importance for the company.

In order to achieve their objective, Generg turned to CGI to help them implement a common platform for the real-time monitoring and remote control of all of their renewable assets, which include wind, solar and hydroelectric power plants, substations and meteorological stations. The need for a historical database to manage and improve the performance of these assets, and the need to reduce the time needed to analyse the information, were key additional considerations.

A new real-time dispatch centre went live in July 2016, with the Renewables Management System (RMS) operating software. This centre enables the realtime monitoring and control of Generg’s production assets, including substations and other relevant equipment, across their portfolio.

The solution interfaces with the Portuguese TSO Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), and handles the command and dispatch of TSO instructions. It is also the information hub for the historical operational data which is used to identify trends and key performance indicators (KPIs) for detailed performance analyses.

A connection with the Portuguese DSO, EDP Distribuiàƒ§àƒ£o (EDP Distribution), was integrated into the solution, and in 2019 the system was scaled up to include wind and solar power plants in France, Italy, Spain, Poland and beyond. In parallel with the real-time tools available for operators, the RMS Monitor interface offers real-time tracking of KPIs across the portfolio. It’s accessible via both web and mobile devices, and so has been used by a range of users at Generg, from field teams to top management.

The Analyse module of RMS was also implemented at Generg. This handles the operational performance management of all the renewable assets. It is built on a database which supports a high volume of operational data, alongside a range of enquiry and reporting tools ” such as production analysis, availability management and efficiency improvement ” that can be accessed via a web interface.

“We identified the need to centralise information and to benchmark our assets in order to understand which are performing well versus those that need improvement,” comments Joàƒ£o Sardo, wind turbine expert and international asset manager at Generg. “This tool offers that insight. With the RMS we can focus on the assets that should be performing better. Previously we had to rely on our own experience to ensure we had a good grasp of the performance of each asset. Now it’s much easier, as we have a tool that levels the playing field, and allows us to act with a greater degree of confidence in how we analyse the data.”

“We understood what we wanted to accomplish from a technical perspective, but what CGI was able to do was integrate our specific needs into the tool. They provided us with a solution which is ‘off the shelf’ but which has the ability to accommodate the needs of different clients.”

“This is a big part of CGI’s DNA,” says Rita Burnay, director of consulting for renewables & smart grids, at CGI. “We have technology which allows fast delivery of a solution, but we also have the ability to accommodate the client’s specific requirements, and deliver those on top of our off-the-shelf solution.”

The implementation has helped Generg improve operational excellence and accrue a number of benefits, including:

ࢀ¢ Centralised control of energy production, improved performance, and quicker control and diagnosis of stoppages, enabling the reduction of downtime

ࢀ¢ Automation of time-consuming tasks, enabling resource optimisation

ࢀ¢ Adaptation to varied regulatory regimes and consequent alignment with different requirements for grid connections

ࢀ¢ Creation of a unique source of operational data and indicators that enables data transparency by various internal and external stakeholders

ࢀ¢ Powerful data-driven, insight-led decision making, and

ࢀ¢ Continuous improvement, benchmarking and analysis of renewable energy production.

Enter 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, and the world is faced with the need to shift operations and staff to an ‘as-remote-as-possible’ approach.

Sardo says: “We have tried to design procedures that allow our teams to operate as safely as possible and because of the network infrastructure and the RMS tools, we are able to keep everyone working from home. Our staff are only dispatched to the field in an emergency, or for vital maintenance work.

“We have strict safety procedures in place for both our teams and our suppliers, and we are constantly engaged with them to ensure we are not putting anyone at risk, nor taking any action which will impact on the availability of the assets.”

However, there were some network upgrades which still needed to be made in order to achieve full remote working. Burnay explains: “There’s a difference between being prepared to work remotely (with everyone able to access the platform from remote locations), and the reality of shifting to everyone using that approach. However, within a couple of days we had increased capacity and Generg was able to continue with their business as usual.”

As more and more work has moved into remote mode, cybersecurity has gained in importance. Burnay comments: “Because we are talking about controlling and managing dispersed renewable energy assets, we have built security into the platform. We have utilised special networks for the solution and security is hard baked into the design.”

Sardo adds: “This is not a new concern for us. We cannot say that any system is bulletproof, but our systems were designed specifically for remote access and are constantly upgraded to ensure that security concerns are addressed. The system is designed to ensure it is as safe as possible, and the way CGI designed the tools and implements the system met our pre-existing security criteria.”

“When you are preparing for a shift to enhanced, remote monitoring and control, you need to be prepared for how it will impact the way you work. This works a LOT better than your old Excel sheets,” Sardo jokes.

There are other positives to this shift in your way of working. “It gives you the confidence and opportunity to look at your internal processes and adapt some of them in order to improve performance,” shares Sara Pires, renewables solution specialist & business analyst, at CGI.

Sardo agrees: “We already had the teams and structure in place, so we were able to implement the RMS tools as an upgrade, and we also took the opportunity to upgrade the management of our renewable assets. At the end of the day, this is a tool ” it doesn’t work by itself ” but it’s a tool that will enable you to take your actions to the next level.”

One of the unexpected benefits of the application for the Generg team was the way in which the mobile tool has been utilised during this time. Sardo explains that the ability to communicate internally between team members had to improve during the pandemic. While the team had been expecting to benefit from having access to a mobile tool, the RMS application has, during this time thus far, exceeded expectations.

It has been said that data is the new gold and digital innovation is reshaping the way in which utilities today function ” and is influencing how they will function in the future. Generg has been able to dig deep into the information provided by the remote access and enhanced analytics in order to continue successfully running its assets, making the shift from pre-COVID to post-COVID in a natural and seamless way.

The post Generg: Monitoring and controlling renewables in real time appeared first on Power Engineering International.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has released its
first Global Renewables Outlook. Resembling the size and scope of the well-established World Energy Outlook produced each year by the International Energy Agency, it is clearly intended to become a global barometer for the worldwide clean energy industry.

This article was originally published as part of the PEI print edition in Smart Energy International Issue 3-2020. Read the full PEI section here, or subscribe to receive a print copy here.

It also includes an array of mind-boggling numbers relating to investment and increases in gigawatt capacity. However, IRENA maintains the figures are grounded in gains already made around the world.

That the inaugural report arrives in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic adds an extra dimension to the report’s economic predictions and recommendations that its authors cannot have anticipated when they first began working on it.

Yet they stress that there is now a once-inalifetime opportunity to put clean energy investment at the heart of the world’s economic recovery from the virus.

“The coronavirus crisis has exposed deeply embedded vulnerabilities of the current system,” says IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera.

“Governments are facing a difficult task of bringing the health emergency under control while introducing major stimulus and recovery measures.”

He says IRENA’s Outlook report “shows the ways to build more sustainable, equitable and resilient economies by aligning short-term recovery efforts with the medium-and long-term objectives of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Agenda”.

“By accelerating renewables and making the energy transition an integral part of the wider recovery, governments can achieve multiple economic and social objectives in the pursuit of a resilient future that leaves nobody behind.”

The report highlights that a pathway to deeper decarbonisation requires a total energy investment up to $130 trillion, yet stresses that “the socio-economic gains of such an investment would be massive”.

“Transforming the energy system could boost cumulative global GDP gains above business-as-usual by $98 trillion between now and 2050,” it states, and adds that this would “nearly quadruple renewable energy jobs to 42 million, expand employment in energy efficiency to 21 million and add 15 million in system flexibility”.

Dolf Gielen is Director of Innovation & Technology at IRENA and says that while the clean energy transition is clearly underway, “we need an acceleration of this transition”.

“The policy environment ” the enabling framework ” is not the same everywhere, so there is an opportunity to improve that.

What is important for investors is a credible long-term outlook to make investments with a lifespan of several decades. And I mean significant investments ” in the order of $3 trillion per year. That’s a lot of moneyࢀ¦ that money is out there ” but there needs to be some reassurance that it can be recovered.”

Gielen says IRENA’s report is “a bottomup analysis looking at what can be done, sector by sector, region by region, even country by country. Based on that, we have identified an economically-viable potential. And we find that the cost benefit from a societal level is very positive”.

The report identifies what it calls ‘five technology pillars for the future of energy’: electrification; increased power system flexibility; conventional renewables; green hydrogen; and fostering innovation.

Electrification

On electrification, the report predicts that electricity could become “the central energy carrier by 2050, growing from a 20% share of final consumption to an almost 50% share, and as a result, gross electricity consumption would more than double”. To get there, however, means “an additional 1000 TWh of electricity demand for electrification of end uses will have to be added every year” ” and that’s on top of existing plans.

For some perspective, that’s the equivalent of adding the entire electricity generation of Japan every year.

And that in turn would mean more than 520 GW of new renewable capacity would need to be added per year, says the report.

Which it stresses is possible because of declining costs, highlighting that four-fifths of solar PV and wind projects to be commissioned this year “will produce electricity cheaper than any fossil-fuel alternative”.

In the transport sector, IRENA forecasts that the number of electric vehicles could increase from around eight million last year to over 1100 million by 2050.

Meanwhile, for heating, it calls for a 10-fold increase in installed heat pumps by 2050.

Flexibility

On its second pillar of increased flexibility, the report calls for power systems to achieve maximum flexibility “based on current and ongoing innovations in enabling technologies, business models, market design and system operation”.

“On a technology level, both long-term and short-term storage will be important for adding flexibility, and the amount of stationary storage would need to expand from around 30 GWh today to over 9000 GWh by 2050.”

However, the report states that most flexibility will still be achieved through other factors like grid expansion and operational measures, demand-side flexibility and sector coupling.

Conventional renewables

Pillar number three is conventional renewables, which IRENA defines as hydropower, bioenergy, solar thermal and geothermal, which “all have significant scale-up potential”.

“Hydropower can bring important synergies to the energy system of the future,” the report states. It adds that it is realistic to call for a 25% increase by 2030, and 60% by 2050, plus a doubling of pumped hydro storage capacity.

IRENA notes that “the synergies between hydropower and other renewable energy technologies in power system operation include the cost effectiveness of using hydropower to counteract the short-term variability of wind and solar generation, and seasonal complementarities in resource patterns”.

IRENA highlights that bioenergy “will become increasingly vital in end-use sectors” and adds that it has a key role to play “in sectors that are hard to electrify, such as shipping, aviation and industry, both for process heat and use as a feedstock”.

It stresses, however, that bioenergy “must be produced in ways that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. The potential is enormous to produce bioenergy cost effectively and sustainably on existing farmlands and grasslands, and to use residues from existing production forests without encroaching upon rainforests”.

Green hydrogen

IRENA’s fourth pillar brings us to one of the hottest topics in the energy sector at the moment: green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is defined as renewable electricity through electrolysis, as opposed to ‘blue’ hydrogen, which is produced from fossil fuels combined with carbon capture and storage.

The report states that hydrogen “can offer a solution for types of energy demand that are hard to directly electrify”.

It notes that while around 120 megatonnes of hydrogen is currently produced per year, almost all of it comes from fossil fuels or electricity generated by fossil fuels ” “less than 1% is green”.

Yet it highlights progress being made, and singles out the world’s largest green hydrogen production plant which launched this year in Japan with a 10 MW electrolyser capacity.

“As costs fall further, green hydrogen will be cheaper than blue hydrogen in many locations within the next five to 15 years,” says the report, adding that some energyintensive industries such as iron making

and ammonia may in the future “relocate to areas with good renewable energy resources to tap this potential to produce cheap green hydrogen”.

It notes that the natural gas industry is looking at hydrogen as a promising solution for greening the gas system and extending the life of existing infrastructure, but IRENA warns that “this approach must be viewed with caution in light of unclear prospects of actually being able to significantly reduce emissions of the gas system and the potential to lock in carbonintensive infrastructure”.

While it says that a hydrogen commodity trade is nascent, it adds that hydrogen “could become the clean energy vector that makes it possible to tap into ample remote, low-cost renewable energy resources ” a development that could have important geopolitical implications as well as further accelerating the demand for renewable power generation”.

Gielen says that green hydrogen is a typical example of a technology “that we know is out there and could be deployed but today are still too expensive ” you need to buy-down these costs by initial investments to get to the cost reductions that you need for widespread deployment”.

He says there “is a role for governments to play in that initial phase” but he adds that “it is also clear that there is also great interest from the private sector to pursue these pathways”.

Innovation

For its fifth pillar, innovation, IRENA states that this is a high priority for decarbonizing industry.

“There is an urgent need to find solutions for key sectors such as iron and steel, cement and petrochemicals, which make up the bulk of industry energy demand.

“Innovation is also needed to find zero CO2 emission solutions for industrial process emissions and for non-energy uses in these sectors.”

It adds that innovation will also continue to be crucial to address transport modes that are hard to electrify, namely aviation and shipping.

The report also looks at energy and socioeconomic transition paths in ten regions, and states that Southeast Asia, Latin America, the European Union and sub-Saharan Africa are poised to reach 70-80 per cent renewable shares in their total energy mixes by 2050.

Similarly, it forecasts that electrification of end uses like heat and transport will rise everywhere, exceeding 50 per cent in East Asia, North America and much of Europe.

“All regions would also significantly increase their welfare and witness net job gains in the energy sector despite losses in fossil fuels,” it adds. However, it notes that “economy-wide, regional job gains are distributed unevenly. While regional GDP growth would show considerable variation, most regions could expect gains”.

The post An unparalleled opportunity in unprecedented times appeared first on Power Engineering International.

This article was originally published in Smart Energy International Issue 3-2020. Read the full digimag here or subscribe to receive a print copy here.

PEi: Tell me more about LevelTen Energy

Tundermann: LevelTen Energy is a web-enabled online marketplace with the core products being power purchase agreements with renewable energy assets under various stages of development.

Developers upload power purchase agreement (PPA) offers according to standard terms and conditions, as well as information about their project. All of the information is formatted in a standard way, which enables us to make an apples-to apples comparison. This is the supply side of the market place. On the whole, we’ve created this platform to help corporate buyers purchase more quickly, more efficiently and more safely.

The demand side or the buyer side of the marketplace allows us to work with corporate buyers and channel partners of all sizes and provide them access to the marketplace. They can review and compare all of those developer offers. Ultimately, we deliver wholesale market expertise, analytics, data and projections of how those PPA offers might perform in the future. That data is used to compare the offers in terms of risk and value.

Would you say there has been an increase in buyer interest?

Definitely, across all geographies. That is one of the reasons I am now based in Paris to oversee the expansion of our marketplace
from North America to Europe.

What trends are you seeing in terms of large corporates?

Historically, there have been a few very large corporations that have signed PPAs with new projects. Those large corporates are still in the market and they are becoming increasingly sophisticated in terms of innovating new contract structures. We work with them to provide the analytics to manage their risk.

One great example of a larger corporate taking advantage of the platform is Starbucks.

Starbucks has a history and a range of renewable energy transactions. They have benefited from our deep dive into wholesale markets and contracting structures, ensuring they got the most from their renewable journey.

When we started working with Starbucks, they hadn’t yet included virtual power purchase agreements or off-site PPAs in their toolkit. Not only could we help them take that next step, we could also advise them away from investing only in a single PPA, which essentially puts all your eggs in one basket.

For example, if a buyer is looking for 100 MW of supply ” traditionally that company or its advisor would find a 100 MW wind farm to meet the requirement. However, it’s less of a risk if we take the time to understand the company’s load, peaks and geographies etc, and invest in three projects that add up to 100 MW, creating a portfolio that better matches their load and lowers their risk through diversification.

This is one innovation that we learned by building an online marketplace with the data driven and web enabled tools. We could automatically calculate an optimized mix of wind and solar assets across the country, matching their load profile in terms of geography and time of day.

While also diversifying their procurement across several projects, you’re also no longer dealing with binary project risk, or the risk of a single asset developer, which may experience financial hardships for example. Furthermore, by diversifying across electricity hubs you’re not exposed to the price of one single location. You’re diversified across multiple locations.

It’s basically a mutual fund approach to renewable energy and it’s achieved through software and algorithms.

This must generate a great deal of data.

You have a great deal of data generated from the demand side, as well as from the supply side, which is changing constantly.

Offer price, curves and forward price projections mean you need a platform to roll that all together and make near term decisions. This is a great model for a large customer like Starbucks. They had a three-project portfolio, which has grown as their load and renewable energy targets have grown.

Another trend we see is new smaller buyers coming to the table and smaller companies starting to join the RE 100, or establishing renewable energy goals. Historically, they were locked out of the market because PPA advisors weren’t usually interested in supporting small volumes. However, with an algorithm and web enabled marketplace, we can serve those smaller buyers very efficiently, even coupling them with larger buyers like Starbucks.

There is clearly an interest in this kind of model in the US. What about Europe?

There is a huge interest and my job here [in Paris] is to explore and understand the marketplace and adapt our commercial approach accordingly. Traditionally, many of the larger buyers are US based, the ones you read about in the North American PPA announcements.

The vast majority of those have a presence in Europe, draw power from Europe and have a carbon impact. Also, corporations with large data centres have had a history of procurement in Europe, and there is a whole range of SMEs, or small medium enterprises, based in Europe who are just beginning their journey.

It’s interesting. While there has been much less corporate renewable energy procurement like direct PPAs in the European market compared to the US, for example, there has been more total renewable energy brought onto the grid in Europe. But the bulk of that has been under state sponsored subsidy programs.

Now while that has done a great job bringing renewable energy onto the grid, it’s actually served as an impediment to corporate PPAs because it’s the government promising a very high rate for electricity and as a developer, you would rather sell to the government than to a corporate who doesn’t really want to pay above the electricity market rate.

In fact, one of the factors that has really made this the right time for the European PPA transition is that many of the subsidy programs have expired or will expire soon.

That means, as a developer selling to the state for the last 10 years, the program you are used to will not be around for much longer. This is where corporate PPAs will likely fill the void in a similar fashion to the 2016 transition in the US.

Another key trend is that this push for renewables is becoming more popular, especially as countries around the world push decarbonisation targets.

The RE 100 list is close to 250 companies ” companies that have made very specific announcements about targeting 100% renewable energyࢀ¦ and that list is growing very quickly.

So even though Europe is our first step beyond North America, I am sure we can expect further geographic expansion in the future.

What other macro trends have you noticed in the energy space?

Firstly, the decline of fossil fuel as baseload and coal in particular. It’s becoming uneconomic and is getting priced out of the grid, especially as more zero marginal cost renewables arrive.

The second trend is the use of gas and natural gas capacity, which can conserve baseload and serve a modulating function.

Also, many people have their eyes on storage and battery storage in particular. Hydrogen storage could become another alternative for grid management in the future.

What type of organizations are you working with at the moment?

They span the spectrum from small to large and from any sector. We work with clients in the retail, financial and fast-moving consumer goods sectors and a lot with data centres. Of course, our heavy industry clients use a large amount of electricity, so they see the value of a locked, long-term power price.

Ultimately, in spite of current trends, our job at LevelTen Energy is to work with corporates to meet their large-scale energy goals and minimise the risk involved in their projects. We look forward to supporting a greater number and variety of corporates in the future.

The post Taking green PPAs to the next level appeared first on Power Engineering International.

Read the full digimag

Nuclear’s place in the sun

Of all the energy transition conferences I’ve attended in recent years, many ” if not most ” have a common denominator: they never mention nuclear.

And I include in this events that have taken place in France, where undoubtedly the lights were being kept on by a reactor not very far away.

Quite why nuclear finds itself the ‘forgotten man’ of the energy transition is not clear. It may be because that, once built, the technology does not particularly need any of the whizzy upgrades that digitalisation has enabled.

Nor can it offer ‘flexibility’ in the way of gas and renewable plants that it takes and that can’t be radically adjusted.

Yet it is zero-emission energy: indeed, it was nuclear ‘clean’ credentials that led to Hinkley Point C reactor being given the green light in the UK and work is now well underway.

The tendency to overlook the role of nuclear in the energy transition is slowly starting to change as the debate becomes more holistic ” we’re moving away from the old ‘renewables good/everything else bad’ rallying call to a more nuanced discussion where conventional types of power generation are seen as enablers and a bridge to a 100 per cent renewable future.

And what is already beginning to boost nuclear’s image is fusion. What was once science fiction is now science fact: several groundbreaking projects are underway around the world.

In this issue we profile some of these projects and speak to some of the key players. We outline the opportunities fusion presents and examine the still considerable challenges that it faces.

What is certain is that fusion is coming. There was once the adage that fusion was ” and always would be ” 30 years away. That is no longer the case and it may herald a new place in the sun for nuclear.

Kelvin Ross
Editor, Power Engineering International

The post Power Engineering International Issue 3 2020 appeared first on Power Engineering International.

In 1920, British physicist Arthur Eddington hypothesised that our sun is powered by fusion: hydrogen nuclei combine in helium nuclei; the products have a lower mass than the reactants and that mass difference is found in the form of energy, including heat and sunlight.

This article was originally published as part of the PEI print edition in Smart Energy International Issue 3-2020. Read the full PEI section here, or subscribe to receive a print copy here.

Ever since then, nuclear fusion has captured the imagination of scientists, sciencefiction writers and the broader public.

Why? Because it combines the fascination of science (the energy of the stars!), the quintessential technological challenge and the promise of a nearly perfect energy source (see Box 1) for all mankind to benefit from. Fusion spinoffs made major contributions to other sectors as well, from medical imaging to robotics, new materials and aerospace, just to name a few. Fusion epitomises the word “moonshot” nearly as much as, if not more, than the space era.

Progress to make fusion a reality has been immense. The ‘triple product’ of density, temperature and confinement time grew exponentially between the 1950s and early 2000s, by a factor of 1,000,000 (one million). With yet another small increase in triple product, by a factor of 2 or higher, the reactor will produce net energy.

The large international ITER tokamak, under construction in France, is designed to start operations in 2025, and it will produce net power by 2035. Specifically, it will produce 500 MW of fusion power, amounting to 10x the power injected in the plasma to keep it hot.

Fusion is coming. Its scientific feasibility is finally in sight. The old joke that “fusion is 30 years away, and always will be” is about to be proven wrong: 2035 is not that far away.

The time is ripe to start tackling the next issues: economic attractiveness, industrialisation, commercialisation.

To be fair, none of these was a goal or constraint for ITER, hence its price-tag, and aside from obvious considerations on firsts-of-a-kind, they have no direct correlation with the projected cost of a fusion power-plant.

The excitement is palpable, as the baton is gradually passing to private companies: there are currently over 30 fusion start-ups worldwide. According to Fusion Energy Base, their number doubled in just four years, between 2016 and 2020.

Another indicator of excitement is the growing membership of the Fusion Industry Association, a nonprofit organisation advocating for “policies that would accelerate the race to fusion energy”.

The Association now counts 22 members and 13 affiliate members, including large non-fusion companies “working to support the fusion industry”.

Growing investments are a third sign of excitement: General Fusion, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Tokamak Energy raised more than $100 million each.

TAE Technologies raised much more than that. Among the investors we find tech-enthusiast billionaires like Jeff Bezos (General Fusion), Bill Gates (Commonwealth Fusions System) and Peter Thiel (Helion Energy), but also energy giants like Eni and Equinor (Commonwealth Fusions System).

There are three main approaches to fusion. Within them, there are sub-categories. For example, within Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF), two companies are betting on the tokamak and two on the stellarator.

The authors of this article founded Renaissance Fusion, a stellarator start-up based in France and in the US. Each approach has pros and cons, and while everybody in the industry agrees on the feasibility of commercial fusion, nobody knows which technology will win the race, and which one will maintain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Therefore, everybody agrees that we still need a relatively broad portfolio of technologies ” fusion is too important to bet on only one concept.

Despite the technical differences, fusion start-ups share similar traits: they are agile, open to technologies invented elsewhere, fast in identifying opportunities and inherently interested in collaborations and co-development.

Partly due to budget constraints, partly due to a sense of urgency, fusion start-ups are immune to the “not invented here” syndrome. Thus, High Temperature Superconductors are finding their way into MCF, and Chirped Pulse Amplification into ICF, just to give two examples.

There are certainly still a lot of challenges ahead. From a technical standpoint, tokamaks will have to avoid or mitigate an instability called disruption; stellarator coils will need to be simpler; pulsed ICF and MTF concepts will need high enough repetition rates, and the power injected in the device, e.g. by lasers, will need to be delivered to the plasma, instead of being otherwise lost. All fusion concepts will need special plasma-facing materials.

Financing will also be difficult. Start-ups will need between $600 million and $1 billion each, and none are sufficiently funded, as of now, to bring fusion electricity to the grid.

However, research intense start-ups are participating in grant proposals and in novel public-private partnerships with universities and public laboratories. In addition, financial research started agglomerating data and creating models for specialised fusion funds. The interest is building up.

Major competition will come from renewables, which are rapidly scaling up worldwide. However, renewables have their own weaknesses in areas (intermittency, land-use) where fusion is strong. Hence, fusion could very well complement renewables in a sustainable, dispatchable energy-mix.

Public acceptance might pose another challenge: fusion typically produces neutrons, which induce radioactivity in the solid parts of the plant. Public outreach will be key in differentiating fusion from fission.

Additionally, the low radioactivity of fusion could be further reduced to the level of a coal-plant or of natural radioactivity, by at least two techniques under study. In one technique, special liquid materials do not become radioactive. In the longer term, different fuels might be fused, not producing neutrons.

As mentioned, there are definitely challenges ahead, but the publicly funded ITER experiment is well on its way to prove the scientific feasibility of fusion by 2035.

Now is the time to gather private investments, talents, innovative ideas and business partnerships to prove the economic feasibility and make fusion smaller, cheaper and possibly faster, and to put its electricity on the grid.

It has been a long journey, a marathon involving three generations of scientists, but progress has been huge ” by a factor of 1,000,000 in triple product ” and huge will be the reward if we cost-effectively realise one final improvement, by a factor of 2 or higher. The final sprint is on.

About the authors

Martin Kupp is professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at ESCP Business School and advisor at Renaissance Fusion.
Francesco Volpe is the founder of Renaissance Fusion. He received his PhD in experimental physics in 2003 from the University of Greifswald, Germany.

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