The energy business is in a stellar moment. Everything that was designed 140 years ago about generating when it is needed can be rethought. Storing electrical energy is now economically viable. It's imperfect, but it's workable. And that changes everything.
A few weeks ago, while drinking a beer pint with a group of old school electric engineer’s mates, it arose how we ended up in the for us unfamiliar territory of energy storage.
I am 35 years as engineer so I learnt the business when you generate only when someone need it. While I hear the conversation without participating, one went over how they are changing the way they teach the next generation this new smart grid very different to the one built in the XX century. And is challenging indeed: decarbonization is not as easy as decommission old power plants, and with a lot of game changers like energy storage, microgrids, hyper connected monitoring and control systems, the new smart grid comes over the existing one that is perfectly functional, very profitable but not sustainable. And even for the game-changing Energy Storage Systems, a new entrant, the Hydrogen technology is on sight and that will change everything again.
These gatherings brought me back to my own experience and to the moments I was in touch with by then, a more realistic renewable business.
---First when Eolic was presented as an option in our portfolio around 2008/09 those 250 KW wind turbines that were not attractive at all, even if they double or triple their capacity. By that time, my team in the Industrial turbines had beautiful, distributed generation orders of all kinds for sites here and there. We had 4 sites of 3x 14 MW to build, 2 more similar orders waiting and not to mention a feasibility study we made regarding a CHP project that considered 4 units 20 MW combined with steam generation dedicated to Oil Production lifting. Right across my office, on the other corner, the large turbine guys had 3 to 4 years delivery time with huge sales pipelines jammed with Combined Cycle projects.
Going after those wind farms with a lot of problems in their supply chain (of course, they have had those problems since they were pioneers) did not look very reasonable to me.
After those projects I stayed in Distributed Generation business changing Turbines for Reciprocating motors, a happy decision. Also, around 2012-2013, I started to participate in CHP with hyper efficient gas engines. It was back then when I attended a presentation of a new EPA Tier IV engine, a beautiful machine, till we learned the price. Presenters delivered a powerful statement about why we needed (and why we must pay more for) those low emissions engines and how we should evaluate those assets as a life cycle simulation.
In a more closed conversation, they told me “Fidias you are not the one that will purchase that machine. You are trapped in an excel sheet that doesn’t include the enviromental column. The one who will purchase those machines is now a teenager or in his early twenties. In ten years from now he will be a Decision Maker and aside to the Excel evaluation he has an environmental awareness that will not only gladly pay the cost difference, but he will demand even more efficient designs or even renewables”. And then he went a little bit about the progress in Solar in some places together with smart buildings.
In those days Solar didn’t have yet a solid case for me, but I always remembered that conversation. My sons then were raising kids but super enviromental sense. Going Solar was not an option and I was so entertained with my engine business, that I even liked that diesel smell. The smell of money we use to say in that team.
Thinking back, the presenter was half right about it because indeed those teenagers, now in their thirties, are environmentally conscious but instead of high efficiency motors they are now purchasing and projecting Wind and Solar Farms.
Then in 2020, during the Covid outbreak, the product sales team was succeeding in renewables delivering cables, inverters, and panels. My project team has a declining pipeline of diesel sites and we decided to give a look to the solar farms. We knew we had the supply chain totally under control and we had a better understanding of the business than many of our partners in the market.
After exploring and evaluating a few cases in Latin America, we decided in december 2021: next year we will move on, from EPC to Developers and then get into full BOO and BOOT models. That decision came one day while having breakfast. We then went to the office, we would sit at the same desk, have another day at the office without realizing that we had changed everything, and for good. Since that day for my team the change has been fascinating, and challenging, to say the least. New businesses models, new KPIs, other angles of the power business, dealing again with concepts of economic dispatch, project finance evaluation aside all the business-as-usual technical stuff.
For me, however, everything has been like a place that was always meant to be. Everything, made sense: my very first job in a Utility where I worked aside with the guys that designed the tariff, the never ending load flow and short circuit studies, the years I learned almost everything about transmission and distribution including all those issues with power quality, the years I spent as distribution lines installer with their demanding shifts and the first attempts as IPPs with gas motors as main drive, then as project manager in power generation with industrial turbines, every previous experience made click.
Back to the table with my friends and while I grab my drink, I commented that these next years will be very special for the power engineers, a moment like that for the electronic when the first video games came and then the personal computers. What the internet revolution was for the communication engineers will be comparable for those who will deal with imminent arrival of the Hydrogen, but knowing it will take a while, I am happy that my team is among the ones that lead these first steps toward a net zero economy.
Renewable Energy is for me, the right place to be.
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