Renewable Energy: Opportunities and...

Renewable Energy: Opportunities and Challenges

Ljubisa Stevanovic Chief Engineer, Advanced Technology GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY Presented at iNEMI Alternative Energy Workshop Oct. 20, 2010, San Jose, CA

Solarfarm

2 / Ljubisa Stevanovic /

iNEMI Workshop, 20 October 2010

The world today

facing big challenges

Population Consumption Energy Security Environment



Driving realities

Economic growth

Oil prices

Water scarcity

*Source: Goldman Sachs

Oil Source: NYMEX Future Prices April 15, 2008

GDP

2000 2050*

US $10T $35T

China $1T $44T

India $.5T $28T

China 44x U.S. 4x

India 60x

2030 40% scarcity

2005 10% scarcity

Impacts 2B people

2010

$80/bbl

1999

$12.50/bbl

>5x… volatility continues

2010

Electrical energy consumption …

… growing to unprecedented levels

2030



emerging markets exploding

Electricity demand by 2030

Sources: EIA-DOE International Energy Annual 2004 & International Energy Outlook 2006

TW hours

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

1980 1985 1990 2003 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030

bil

KW

-hr

Asia

Africa

Middle East

Europe & EurAsia

Central and S America

North America

The growth can‟t be sustained



Energy technologies for the 21st century

Driving cost of electricity down

Eff

icie

nc

y

Re

lia

bil

ity

Em

ission

s

Efficient Diverse

nuclear

wind

solar

biomass

hydro

geothermal

+

Affordable, reliable & environmentally responsible



Renewables to the rescue?

Source: REN21 2006 update + EER

9

Wind & Solar … Zero fuel cost , zero CO2 … massive opportunity

„03 „00 „06

8 4

Solar PV

Wind

17

Global Wind & Solar PV annual installations

(GWs)

„09

45

59

„12

~22%

CAGR

~41% • 50 countries installing wind power • 66 countries with renewable targets • US … 20% wind ‟30 • EU … 20% Renewable Energy ‟20 • China … 100 GW Wind ‟12 • India …20 GW Wind „12

37

15

47

Strong growth to continue



Cost of electricity nearing mainstream

U.S. ¢ per kWhr

Coal

~7.5

Nuclear

~6

Biomass

~10

Solar

~30 20 year levelized

Basis: $8.00/MMBtu NG

Wind

~8.0

Gas

~8

Technology driving down cost

• Higher efficiency

• Increased capacity factor

• More reliable „95 „80 „10

5

10

20

15

Wind: the most economic, large scale renewable



Up $4B

• 13,800 wind turbines

• 21 GW (13% of world-wide installed base)

GE installed base $3.2

$2.2

'05 '06 '07 '08

$4.8

Sales

($ in billions)

$6

GE Company Proprietary

'09

$6+

GE Wind business growth



• U.S. wind installations: 35 GW • Total U.S. useable wind resources: 734 GWe (class 3 or higher and within 10 km of transmission lines) • For comparison, U.S. total generating capacity is 1 TW

The potential of wind energy



Near-infinite potential of solar energy

, enough to

satisfy world-wide electricity

consumption in 2010



$0.00

$0.05

$0.10

$0.15

$0.20

$0.25

$0.30

$0.35

$0.40 USA (CA)

Europe (Germany)

Unsubsidized Solar LCOE - Ave

14yr CAGR –9%

14yr CAGR +3%

LC

OE

($

/kW

h)

Solar closing the cost gap

LCOE: levelized cost of electricity



Challenges and opportunities: wind

Wind turbines: up to 5MW land based, over 5 MW offshore

GW-scale wind farms

Severe civil, mechanical and electrical challenges. Difficult trade-offs

• Full conversion PE drives size, weight and complexity

• Most severe in offshore applications: tough environment, hard to

access, expensive to maintain, stringent reliability requirements

Develop better reliability prediction methods

Develop more reliable power electronics for these applications

Ever-increasing scale of wind installations:

Challenges:

Opportunities:



Challenges and opportunities: grid

Grid stability impacted by variability of renewables

No simple remedy

• Utility-scale energy storage not practical

• Spinning reserve costly, defeats the purpose of renewables

• Load shedding requires “smarter” grid

Wind farm impact on grid stability:

Recommended actions:

Build a smarter grid with controls and communications for:

• Interactive balancing of supply/demand

• Automatic reconfiguration to prevent cascading outages



Challenges and opportunities: solar

Utility scale PV farms without strong reliability track-record

Fast growth causing strains in supply chain

Levelized cost of energy not at parity with fossils

Deployment of large scale PV installations:

Recommended actions:

Explore synergies with other industries/applications,

e.g. UPS, wind converters

Renewable Energy: Opportunities and...

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