Extending Scenarios for Technology Development Planning in Power Generation

Author(s):  
Flavio J. Franco

The Scenario Planning methodology has been applied by national and international institutions to long term studies of possible future evolutions of primary and final energy consumption, power generation capacity, emerging power generation technologies and green house gas emissions. Power generation equipment manufacturing companies are large enough to have considerable influence on how the future of the energy world will unfold, through their investment decisions in technology development. On the other hand, their future depends on external factors, out of their control, such as economics, demographics, public opinion, government policies, availability of natural resources and competitor technologies, not all of them explicitly considered in the scenarios published by those institutions. If robust technology development strategies are to be chosen, it is essential for a manufacturer, in the first place, to have as clear as possible an understanding not only of the published long-term scenarios, but also of the certainties and uncertainties regarding the driving factors that can significantly affect its future in particular. From this understanding, it should ideally create its own set of scenarios, against which it should test its strategies. In a previous paper the author discussed external factors and aspects of published scenarios, which are relevant for manufacturers within their usual planning time scales. From that discussion, two scenarios were proposed, as alternative ‘futures’ to the scenarios published by the International Energy Agency. The study was restricted to the OECD countries. In this paper, an extension of the previous work is presented, where some non-OECD countries are included and new external factors are considered, relevant in the context of these countries, which are China, Brazil and India.

Author(s):  
Flavio J. Franco

Several national and international organizations publish long term studies of possible future evolutions of primary and final energy consumption, installed power generation, adoption of new energy technologies and greenhouse gas emissions, for example, in the form of ‘scenarios’. Which scenario or combination of scenarios will come true depends on many factors, not least the choice of technologies to be developed and the amount of resources put into the development of the chosen technologies. Power generation equipment manufacturers thus have a strong influence on how the future of the energy world will unfold, through their technological choices and the investments they make to develop the technologies. However their own future also depends on how external factors evolve, including, for example, public opinion, economics, population growth, competitor technologies etc., which are also considered in the aforementioned scenarios. In this paper a discussion is made of the aspects of scenarios described in the literature that are relevant for technology strategic management within the time scales usually considered by commercial organizations. As a result, two scenarios are proposed, based on those presented by the International Energy Agency and on data from other sources.


Author(s):  
Flavio J. Franco

There is a large number of studies about energy long term trends and policies, published by national and international government organisations. Commercial companies, particularly manufacturers of power generation equipment, can take benefit of these studies to test the robustness of long term technology development strategies. Scenario Planning and System Dynamics have been used by the government organisations to study energy policies. In this paper an application of this methodology is proposed for manufacturers of power generation equipment, in particular gas turbine manufacturers. A generic company is used as an illustrative example, against scenarios produced by the International Institute for Applied System Analysis. A System Dynamics model is proposed, simplifications and assumptions are discussed, the type of results that can be obtained is shown and some recommendations are suggested for the construction of more realistic models.


Author(s):  
Timothe´e Perdrizet ◽  
Daniel Averbuch

This paper describes and exemplifies an efficient methodology to assess, jointly and in a single calculation, the short and long terms failure probabilities associated to the extreme response of a floating wind turbine, subjected to wind and wave induced loads. This method is applied to the realistic case study OC3-Hywind used in phase IV of the IEA (International Energy Agency) Annex XXIII Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration. The key point of the procedure, derived from the outcrossing approach, consists in computing the mean of the outcrossing rate of the floating wind turbine response in the failure domain over both the short term variables and the ergodic variables defining long term parameters.


2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-526
Author(s):  
The-Hiep Nguyen

In the energy field and more specifically in the petroleum sector, several models have been developed with a view to determining long-term price strategies and supply and demand flows without considering the sector in question from an oligopolistic perspective : institutions have been excluded from these models. This study explicitly recognizes the importance of variables often characterized as extra-economic and proposes to examine the degree of OPEC's stability. Among the factors that could negatively influence this stability are bilateral oil agreements, the coalition of consumer countries within the International Energy Agency and rivalry among the members of OPEC. The respective weight of each of these factors has been carefully examined. On the other hand, an oil price indexing formula accepted and respected by all parties concerned would ensure the stability of this organization. However, stability via indexing is unlikely as it is difficult to find a formula acceptable to all parties. It is therefore to be anticipated that the world energy and petroleum situation in the near future will be a function of the policies of the two poles : the United States, the largest consumer, and Saudi Arabia, the largest producer. The functions-objectives of these two countries have also been examined in order to derive a number of specific hypotheses relative to the eventual evolution of the energy and petroleum sector.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Josephine K. Musango ◽  
Alan C. Brent

Technology roadmaps are critical for decisions pertaining to technology development. They have been utilised in the renewable energy sector to assist in filtering alternative technology options in order to support energy policy formulation, energy security and energy independence, among others. However, solar aided power generation is a recent concept and no roadmap has been developed for the technology as yet. This paper thus reviewed the literature related to roadmapping with the aim of understanding the methods and tools that have been utilised in other settings. Informed by the literature, a conceptual framework was developed, which was further utilised for the initial analysis for developing a roadmap for solar aided power generation in South Africa. Generally, it would be beneficial for South Africa to integrate solar aided power generation within its current Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) or the National Treasury Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programme. However, it should be noted that this is only feasible in the short- and medium-term. In the long-term, there is a need to support stand-alone solar thermal technologies.


Author(s):  
Flavio J. Franco

The world of power generation is currently facing a number of challenges and uncertainties, caused by technical, economic, political, geographical and social factors. Manufacturers of power generation equipment have to design their strategies for technology development taking into account these challenges and uncertainties. They have to set goals for the medium and the long term, which involve the commitment of huge amounts of resources. At the same time, given the uncertainty of the future, they have to try to reduce their risks. Scenario-Based Planning is a methodology to deal with uncertainty in making decisions for the long term. It does not tell planners what will probably happen but helps them to understand what may happen through an understanding of the relationships of cause and effect within the environment of interest. Taking gas turbines as an example, this paper shows an application of the method to the evaluation of the markets related to different primary energy sources and different technologies, within power generation scenarios given by the IEA and scenarios proposed in previous papers by the author. Although current power generation gas turbines are predominantly designed to burn natural gas, developments based on other primary energy sources will require gas turbines to run with different fuels (synthetic gas or hydrogen, for example), helium or CO2 (in high temperature nuclear reactor systems) or hot air (in hybrid solar thermal power systems). Wind power may also require backup from gas turbines, probably incorporating significant fuel flexibility. An estimate of the value of the potential markets related to these different applications of gas turbines is made in this paper. Historical and estimated experience curves for the technologies of interest and their dependence relationships are used in this analysis, with a system dynamics model as described in [1].


Subject Long-term energy markets outlook. Significance The International Energy Agency (IEA) has upgraded its forecast for total primary energy demand (TPED) to 2040 for the first time since it began projecting this far out in 2014. Impacts The IEA’s belief that the world is on an environmentally unsustainable path will bolster decarbonisation efforts nationally and globally. The IEA does not see oil demand peaking by 2040; this and gas’s growing share of global demand will help sustain oil and gas investment. China and India switching from coal to gas will reduce coal’s share of energy demand even though India’s official targets are optimistic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 647
Author(s):  
Martin Wilkes

Since the turn of the century, gas has been highlighted as the transition fuel to a lower emissions world, and, in 2011, the International Energy Agency published a special report entitled ‘Are we entering the golden age of gas’, which indicated that gas use could rise by over 50% to provide more than 25% of world energy demand by 2035. Even though gas use has risen in tandem with the increase in renewable energy, over the past decade, coal has been the fastest growing fuel because developing countries choose cheap power to provide their growing energy needs. Gas has been, and continues to be, subject to a green, cheap squeeze; squeezed by cleaner renewables on the one hand, and cheaper coal on the other. This paper will look at the impact that increasing amounts of renewable energy has on existing power generation and supply systems, and provide insights into the potential range of outcomes in emission levels, and the need to not only discuss renewable energy target, but to also understand the total energy mix, and the need to reposition gas from a transition fuel to the natural long-term companion of renewables.


Author(s):  
Viktorija Badasjane ◽  
Mats Alhskog ◽  
Anna Granlund ◽  
Jessica Bruch

Within an international manufacturing network (IMN), one particular factory, called the lead factory is responsible for development of new products, processes and technologies as well as transferring these to the subsidiaries within the IMN. These responsibilities require coordination, which is found difficult even in the best-performing companies due to its complexity. When the responsibility for development of Industry 4.0 technologies are included such as cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things the complexity increases further. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify what are the challenges with coordination of technology development and transfer of Industry 4.0 technologies in IMNs. Accordingly, a real-time embedded case study was carried out with six manufacturing companies. One major finding is that development of Industry 4.0 technologies does not fit the current way of organizing technology development at lead factories. Another finding is that several of the identified challenges connected to technology development can be derived from a lack of a long-term strategy ensuring competence for future needs.


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