Renewable energy trends for 2023

RatedPower, now a part of Enverus, has released its annual findings derived from nearly 100 diverse industry experts from across the world and more than 101,000 simulations of its software. According to the results, the focus for 2023 will be on accelerating the adoption of renewable energy power generation, reducing the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), fuel diversification and energy storage investment.

“In the year ahead, we expect the green transition to provide a massive boost to investments in solar photovoltaics (PV) — for residential, commercial and industrial, and for utility-scale installations. The industry is increasingly looking at ways to incorporate battery storage and clean, green hydrogen into renewable installations to maximise supply,” said Andrea Barber, Vice President of Power & Renewables at Enverus and Co-founder of RatedPower, upon release of the report.

Key trends revealed in the report:

1. Instability and grid saturation cause concern

Grid saturation and instability has joined permitting and regulation as the biggest challenge the renewable industry is facing in the coming year, with both issues cited by 68% of respondents. The increase in costs is widely mentioned amongst the respondents as a major challenge. More than 40% of survey respondents have also cited the increasing lack of skilled personnel, land availability and raw materials.

2. Energy storage gaining more attention

When asked about technologies with the highest potential, experts still mention energy storage as a trendy topic, but agree that the future might be in newer PV technologies that contribute to the deployment of renewable capacity at the scale needed for global decarbonisation. Agriphotovoltaics, floating PV, vehicle-integrated PV and building-integrated PV are promoted as routes to expanding solar capacity.

3. US and China on top but Australia still up there

For the first time, the US has overtaken China as the country with the highest growth potential, with 60% of responses placing USA at the top, followed by China with 46%. India and Australia also made the list with their ambitious renewable plans.

4. Diversification is key

Diversification of renewable energy is one of the top three key success factors of a leading energy company, according to 68.5% of respondents. Almost all industry professionals believe that automation, digitalisation of the processes and energy storage need to be the focus of investors to help with the grid saturation and instability challenges.

5. Other data

The data shows an increase in the popularity of string inverters over central inverters for the past two years. The simulations based with these inverters are 53% and 47% respectively.

Although solar tracking systems accounted for more than half of the simulations, there seems to be a growing trend towards the use of fixed structures, which increased by 3%.

Bifacial modules simulations kept growing last year, reaching a total of 71.87% of simulations, up from 57% in 2021.

Image credit: iStock.com/Pixelci