Energetica India Magazine October-November 2021

RENEWABLE POWER 29 energetica INDIA- Oct-Nov_2021 total land and you can use the rest to grow plants and most solar farms are built in deserts, where there are huge amounts of uninhabited lands. However, because of the amount of land required, you must locate your renewable generators away from the population centers, which brings us to the third reason for the high cost of renewable energy, transmission. 3. Transmission To build a solar farm or a windmill, you need a large area of land that gets a lot of sun/wind. The best sites are often not close to cities where users locate, thus, more transmission is required to connect those power plants to the grid. Further, the grid needs to be upgraded, old lines need to be maintained and modernized to handle the renewable capacity, in addition to building new step up and step down transform- ers. 4. Reliability One of the biggest drawbacks of renewable power plants is that they only produce power intermittently. Utilities need power when the sun isn’t shining and/or the wind isn’t blowing, which means they require a backup ramping source of energy to meet the demand and maintain stable volt- age and frequency. These backup generators are typically natural gas-fired plants because these facilities can quickly be turned on or off in re- sponse to fluctuating supply and demand for electricity. This doesn’t only add an extra cost for maintaining the tradi- tional power stations, but also the energy from these stations becomes more expensive, as they don’t run at full blast. One solution to this problem is investing in battery storage sys- tems. However, although innovation in storage has begun popping up recently, the battery technology is still in its infancy and won’t be able to provide a grid strength supply. 5. Experience Another important factor that contributed to the high cost of renewable energy is experience. The renewable market is still relatively new and has a limited number of companies that can facilitate the building, installa- tion, and maintenance of large-scale renewable energy plants. Further, renewable projects need a lot of equipment and mate- rial. For instance, to construct a solar farm you need hundreds of thousands of solar panels, which can be held down by the supply chain. Some argue that all the countries should be more like Germa- ny where they have nearly half of their power generation from renewables. However, it’s important to keep in mind that they have a very stable supply chain and equipment suppliers as well as an es- tablished renewable energy sector with years of experience building these generators. Conclusion There are a few challenges that prevent the world from going 100% renew- able energy, and at the top of that is the upfront cost. Overall, the cost of renewable power is high in the short term, but if you compare it to the hidden costs - such as pollution and environmental dam- age from traditional generators- renewables are definitely a better option. The renewable market is relatively new, and we can only assume that with enough research and development, the cost of building sustainable energy generators will be significantly reduced. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf https://sciencing.com/much-land-needed-wind-turbines-12304634.html https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/topics/climate-energy/renewable-energies/renewable-energies-in-figures