Off Grid

Thinking beyond the hype: Industrial IoT, Satellite communication, artificial intelligence and machine learning, 5G and network innovation

Increasingly violent weather, probably caused by global warming, is increasingly taking down electricity distribution lines and poles and cyberattacks are increasingly taking out electricity, apparently just as trials for major terrorism of this sort.

The cost of renewable energies such as tidal and wave power in the open sea, wind and solar power have come down greatly in recent years but they are rarely considered viable for base power, largely because of the energy storage needed.

The growth of distributed renewable energy generation has seen the emergence of many new concepts and business models. One such example is peer to peer energy trading. In this article IDTechEx looks at this new field in more detail, including a review of the technical and regulatory challenges and analysis of a number of key case studies.

As society and equipment become more mobile and remote from grids, diesel and gas gensets will be bought in larger numbers for a few years yet - possibly peaking at around $30 billion global market size when over 600GW will be deployed. The Zero Genset market will rise to at least $100 billion if it replaces significant grid power.

In any emerging technology, the pace of innovation is rapid, sometimes dauntingly so. Patent Analytics is a service that IDTechEx provides utilising our long-standing expertise in a range of emerging technologies to provide clients of our services the answers they need.

The addressable market for any zero-emission electricity source goes beyond where electricity is used today. It extends to the much bigger potential markets for new uses for electricity and for replacing other forms of power used for cooking, heating and vehicles.

In this article IDTechEx gives a short overview of the topic of wide bandgap semiconductors covering the fundamental material science, the key players, the market potential. The impact on a range of applications will also be discussed, with a focus on renewable energy systems and microgrids.

IDTechEx attended the event last week to meet with key stakeholders including industrial OEMs, power module manufacturers, established semiconductor companies and innovative new GaN (gallium nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) developers to report back on the current and future trends. The following article is the second of two parts and provides a summary of some of the key GaN related developments and at the event and their impact on various industries and applications.

IDTechEx Analyst Dr Na Jiao attended The China International Battery Fair (CIBF), the first legal international battery fair in the Chinese battery industry, which is held every two years.