Five energy trends for 2018
Business news
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By
Nick Flaherty
The global market intelligence company has identified a number of trends for 2018:
- Improved energy storage for renewables: For a long time, renewable energy sources have been held back due to the lack of large-scale battery energy storage systems. Major players like ABB, Tesla, and Siemens AES are concentrating on improving the battery storage. The battery-based energy storage capacity will grow to as much as 45GW in the next five years according to many industrial reports.
- Data centres to become more efficient: The data collected, stored, and shared are immensely increasing in this technologically improved world, and people are more inclined towards the use of smartphones, downloads, IoT, and other connected devices. This has increased the power consumption, and the global power usage is expected to reach five percent from two percent in the coming years. This is driving increased efficiency in data centres
- The rise of electric vehicles to create an energy ‘timebomb’: The increase in demand for electric vehicles emphasises on the need for more energy to power the vehicles and leads to increased pressure to meet the energy sector demand. This trend will be one of the most prominent energy industry trends to watch out for in 2018 as most countries do not have the generating capacity to meet this skyrocketing demand. The players in the power industry will also have to equip themselves with the necessary infrastructure required for electric vehicles. Adding millions of new charging points will also add significant challenges to grid management.
- Electricity grids to become smarter: Digital solutions are making electricity grids smarter. This is one of the energy industry trends that is expected to accelerate through 2018 as hardware that can control voltage and redirect current in a coordinated manner in being integrated into the grid. This will result in operations at electricity grids to become more responsive and reliable. The researchers also expect a spike in demand for the multi-directional grid in the coming years, which would give consumers the ability to send power into the grid. Smart meters and smart appliances can also help consumers to gain better control over their energy usage.
- Brain drain in the energy sector: One of the key energy industry trends for this year is the talent challenge they will face due to the imminent retirement of a large numbers of older workers. More than 500,000 energy sector employees are expected to retire in the next 5 to 10 years. This will result in the loss of critical knowledge resources that will create a hard-to-address skills gap. To avoid this situation, power companies will have to act immediately with aggressively recruit new talent.
www.infinitiresearch.com/thoughts/energy-industry-trends-2018
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