(Credit: TI) - Imagine a day where everyone would have access to energy that is smart, that is affordable and that is green.  Innovations at TI are helping make such vision a reality. Today, renewable energy accounts for close to 10% of the total energy consumed across the world – from sources such as hydro, solar, wind, geo-thermal and bio-mass energy.

 

Markets, manufacturing and investment has expanded further across the developing world, and it is become increasingly evident that renewables energy growth is no longer dependent upon a small handful of countries. Aided by continuing technological advances, falling prices and innovations in financing—all driven largely by policy support—renewables have become increasingly affordable for a broader range of consumers worldwide. In a rising number of countries, renewable energy is considered crucial for meeting current and future energy needs.

Solar Energy 

 

Solar energy is one of the most benign sources of electric energy since it has zero emission and unlike fossil fuels, does not run the risk of price volatility or delivery. The Solar PV market had close to 39GW of capacity installed in 2013, 40GW in 2014 and is expected to be adding close to 54GW in 2015. More and more areas are starting to see grid parity – the point at which electricity is equal or cheaper than grid power especially in areas that have abundant sunlight and high cost of electricity.

 

TI’s comprehensive solar energy harvesting portfolio delivers solutions to the entire solar energy systems. A broad selection of analog, power management, microcontroller & wireless communication modules are targeted at both grid-tied & off-grid central inverters as well as micro-converters and micro-inverters, to maximize the power point and provide the highest possible system efficiency.

 

Wind Energy

 

The contribution of wind energy as a clean and sustainable source of energy, in particular, has grown rapidly over the past decade. Wind turbines take up less space than average power stations. The land in wind farms can be setup as multi-use plots – for example since the base on wind mills is just a few square meters, these farms are ideal for agricultural use. In 2014 wind energy set a new record for annual installations; 51,473 MW of new wind generating capacity was added representing a 44% increase in the annual market.

 

TI‘s processors, power management, signal processing and interface solutions are being used by leading wind energy system manufacturers to design sub-systems such as power quality monitoring, pitch & yaw drivers, power optimization modules and wind inverters.

 

Energy Storage and Fuel Cell

 

The first commercial use of fuel cells was to power the remote spacecraft, weather stations and satellites by NASA. Fuel cells are one of the most reliable sources of clean energy - they convert chemical energy from fuel into electricity, through a clean electro-chemical process with a very low carbon foot print. These fuel cells are acting as distributed power generators to server-farms of the world’s leading technology providers.

 

TI’s processors and signal chain offerings such as ADC, IGBTs and MOSFET drivers, interface drivers and Op Amps aid in development of power converter modules that are the backbone of these fuel cells. Energy storage systems built using TI solutions include hybrid inverters, low voltage and islanding inverters etc.

 

Hydro Energy

 

Hydro power is one of the oldest and widely used renewable energy technologies. As of today, 150 countries have an infrastructure in place to generate hydro power and energy from this source is expected to continue to increase at close to 3% over the next 25 years. The cost of hydro power is relatively low, making it a competitive source of electricity. Further, automation to regulate the flow helps with scaling generation with changing energy demand.

 

Hydro energy stations require systems such as Turbine control, machine automation, remote data monitoring and control of the hydraulic systems. TI’s vast portfolio of analog and embedded processors helps provide the building blocks for these sub-systems.

 

Other Energy Harvesting

 

Energy harvesting with breakthrough TI technology allows the development of systems that extract and manage power from a variety of sources such as solar, thermal electric, electromagnetic, and vibration energy. TI and leading energy harvesting partners are creating a complete ecosystem for designers to envision and create a battery-less world. Also, by enabling 20+ year battery life, TI is opening the door to new applications that were not feasible with traditional battery powered systems.

 

As renewable energy markets and industries mature, they increasingly face new and different challenges, as well as a wide range of opportunities. Large scale adoption of distributed energy systems and automation technology along with recent advancements in storage technologies is accelerating the transition of renewable energy to mainstream markets.

 

Be sure to check out the next blog in this series for more on technologies accelerating the renewable energy markets in an upcoming On the Grid post.

 

Click here for more on how TI helps create a smarter city!  

 

- Jayanth Rangaraju -

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