Technology Status - NET Nowak Energie & Technologie AG

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Renewables for Power Generation 2003: Status and Prospects hopes to assist
decision makers by supplying an accurate and comprehensive overview of
the renewable technology sector. This study assesses the current situation
and future opportunities for the six main “new” renewable energy
technologies that produce electricity. These are:
● small hydropower;
● solar photovoltaics;
● concentrating solar power;
● biopower;
● geothermal power;
● wind power.
The study consists of new analysis on the interaction of technology
development and market experience, and a synthesis of insightful studies
performed by government agencies and private sector organisations. This
publication has consciously excluded other renewable technologies that are
at an earlier stage of development, such as ocean energy, as the current focus
on them is solely in the realm of research and demonstration. It has also
excluded large hydropower, as most IEA governments consider them to be
mature and competitive.
The challenge is to consider the entire technology progression from the
laboratory, to manufacturing, to market use, as well as from the relationships
of these technologies to each other and within the wider energy sector, and
do so, both in an inter-sectorial and cross-technological fashion.
An inter-sectorial view is useful because there are important technologyindustry-market
relationships that affect renewable energy technologies all
along the value chain, while providing opportunities for “technology
learning”. Technology learning is the term for the empirical observation that
the cost of an industrially manufactured product decreases by a more or less
constant percentage each time the cumulative volume of the product is
doubled. Expressed as the “experience curve”, technology learning thus
reflects the virtuous cycle with both technology development and market
deployment issues. The experience (or “learning”) curve translates the
complex interactions among technology, industry and market into a
simplified relationship. However, the experience curve only reflects an
empirical relationship between the input and output of a black-box-like
learning system and does not explain the processes going on within the
learning system. But, if correctly applied and interpreted, the experience
INTRODUCTION X1