The Future of Renewable Energy Harvesting

The renewable energy market is set to grow to more than $1.5 trillion by 2025, according to Allied Market Research. With its many constituents, biomass remains the leading form of the renewable energy market. This is due to the sheer number of places to source it from. But apart from the supply, there is another critical factor in driving the renewable energy sector forward.

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The continued advancement in renewable energy harvesting machines ensures that clean energy remains viable and cost-effective. Hence, it is pivotal in the quest to turn the world’s power grid 100% renewable.

Reliable Renewable Energy Sources

Nowadays, the most efficient form of renewable energy is biomass, followed by hydroelectricity and wind. They’re the resources we depend on the most for our clean energy goals. Getting more of these renewable energy resources is the best chance we have at reducing our carbon footprint. This is something that leaders in the world of machines and tools are tackling right now.

Machine Advancements and Renewable Energy Harvesting

As it stands, the most productive renewable energy sources heavily rely on harvesting machines with moving parts. Turbines on wind and hydroelectric generators, as well as biomass harvesters and processors. These devices themselves cost energy to use. Also, if we grow too reliant on them and experience too many breakdowns, it could compromise the entire energy supply chain. Therefore, ensuring efficiency and reliability is paramount.

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According to spiborescopes.com, this is thanks to tooling companies working closely with the energy sector. This helps them craft tools to their specifications. More Floating Offshore Wind farms are being erected. These wind farms have a greater capacity for energy production while being less intrusive. In fact, new compound harvesting vehicles are reducing the steps taken in making biofuel.

The Future Of Renewable Energy Harvesting

The renewable energy harvesting sector continues to advance in both production and technology. The fact that its market stayed steady while fossil fuels were evidence of that. This is all thanks to a strong support structure built by the machinery and tooling industry. It is also due to this intimate relationship that energy gathering will become more automated.

Soon, harvesting renewable energy will be passive as well as efficient. Many innovative automated energy harvesting devices are on the rise. These include trees fitted with photovoltaic cells. There are also companies developing pressure-powered generators. These can be placed under high-traffic roads and walkways.

Such devices have been dubbed the “ambient energy harvesters”. These devices owe their invention to important lessons in efficiency and reliability. Lessons that the machine and tool industry will keep learning as it helps the renewable energy sector reach maturity.

There’s no telling when we might see our power grid fully supplied by renewable resources. However, we may have just hit our stride in working towards that goal.

A Blackout, Big Oil, and Wind Energy

The annual wind turbine capacity additions in the United States totaled 14.2 gigawatts, surpassing the previous record of 13.2 GW added in 2012. The whole world is seeing similar growth.  The wind industry isn’t without controversy. Critics blame it for the scope of a blackout in Australia. On the other hand, international oil companies have begun to build off-shore wind farms.

Critics’ case against wind energy

According to its critics, wind power is unreliable. The wind doesn’t blow all the time. It doesn’t blow on any predictable pattern. Wind turbines require some minimum wind speed for them to work at all. And if the wind is too strong, they can’t operate safely and must shut down.

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Wind can cross one or the other of these thresholds multiple times a day. They operate at full capacity for only a few hours a year. So the theoretical capacity of a wind farm greatly exceeds its actual output.

The times turbines can generate electricity do not coincide with rising and falling demand for electricity. This variability creates problems for stabilizing the grid. Critics further claim that the wind industry can’t operate without massive government subsidies.

Wind power and South Australia blackout of 2016?

South Australia depends on wind energy for about 40% of its electricity. It suffered seven tornadoes on September 28, 2016. Two of them, with winds almost as fast as Hurricane Katrina, destroyed twenty towers that held three different transmission lines. Nine wind farms shut down.  Within minutes, the entire state suffered a massive blackout.

What contributed the most to the blackout? South Australia’s high dependence on wind power? The weather? Or something else?

Renewable energy skeptics quickly claimed the blackout justified their position. The wind farms simply failed to provide enough electricity in the emergency. Wind and solar energy, they say, are inherently unreliable. South Australia’s heavy reliance demonstrates an irresponsible policy based on ideology more than technological reality.

Certainly, the weather would have caused a disturbance in electrical service no matter what source of electricity. People near the downed transmission lines could not have avoided loss of power. But prompt action by grid operators makes it possible to bypass problem areas and limit the extent of the outage.

On closer examination, however, the correct answer to the multiple-choice question above is C: something else.

Wind turbines have “low voltage ride through” settings to keep operating for brief periods when voltage dips below the threshold at which they can operate correctly. If low-voltage conditions occur too frequently, the wind turbines have a protection mechanism that turns them off.

  • Ten wind farms experienced between three and six low-voltage events within two minutes. But the turbines were operating on factory settings. No one performed any testing to determine good settings under local conditions.
  • The agency that regulates the Australian electricity market knew nothing about the protection feature. It blamed the wind farms, but surely someone on staff should have been familiar with the default operation of the turbines. After all, the agency approved purchase and installation of the turbines. It had all the documentation.
  • Two gas generating plants that should have supplied backup power failed to come online.

The weather caused a problem that became a crisis not because of technical limitations of renewable energy, but because of too many different organizations’ incompetence.

If the wind is too strong, wind turbines can’t operate safely and must shut down.

One homeowner in South Australia didn’t suffer from the outage. He didn’t even know about the blackout till he saw it on the news. He had to test the accuracy of the news reports by opening his oven and noting that the light didn’t come on.

It turns out he had installed solar panels just a few weeks earlier. And since power outages in his part of South Australia occur almost every month, he decided to install a Tesla Powerwall as well.

He can’t use it to power his entire house, but it takes care of the lights and the television. It stores enough electricity for 10 hours of off-grid power.

Big oil and wind power

International oil companies have not joined the chorus of wind-industry skeptics. Several of them, including Royal Dutch Shell, have begun to invest heavily in off-shore wind farms. Especially in the North Sea. Oil production there has steadily declined for about 15 years.

Exploring for new oil fields has become too risky and expensive. These oil companies have decided that investing in wind energy helps their cash flow and makes it more predictable.

Oil companies have more expertise in working on offshore platforms than do companies that specialize in wind energy. Instead of building a foundation for turbines on the ocean floor, at least one oil company has begun to explore how to mount them on floating platforms.

Traditional wind energy firms have been operating turbines in the North Sea for years, but the oil companies have begun to outbid them. Their off-shore expertise has helped them drive down their costs.

So far, American oil companies have shown less interest in wind farms. If they decide they’re in the oil business, they will eventually lose market share to renewable energy companies. If they decide they’re in the energy business, they’ll have to start investing in renewable energy. And if any decide to invest heavily in solar power besides or instead of wind, they will still be following the lead of Total, a French oil company.

For that matter, the coal business is dying. Perhaps some of them will have enough sense to invest in renewables to improve their cash flow.