The Rise of the Robots in Renewables
This month we went under the skin of Renewables … quite literally. We researched the impact that poor maintenance could have on the energy output in Wind and Solar and we studied the rise of a new growing market – Robotic services in Renewables.
The results were quite staggering. Robotic services in renewables, i.e. use of robots for maintenance, cleaning and inspection, is a rapidly growing market which could grow over 4 times current levels reaching USD 30 bn by 2030.
Here’s what we found.
Renewable energy industry has boomed over the past decade. Wind industry has reached 837 GW of total installed capacity (from 238 GW in 2011, 13% 10yCAGR) with over 500,000 wind-turbine generators (WTG) installed and is expected to increase 3-fold by 2030. Solar energy was at 940 GW of installed capacity of which 485 GW (51%) is in Asia and is projected to grow by ~3x by 2026.
Global decrease in renewable energy prices is shrinking margins and puts major pressure for improving OPEX and decreasing down time, which makes the case for more efficient maintenance.
Average WTG height/diameter are growing from 0.75 MW (2011) to 3 MW (2021) and projected to expand further to over 14 MW (2030) due to higher wind speeds at height and scale. Larger WTGs are more difficult to repair, and downtime is more expensive.
Wind turbines can lose up to 7-10% output due to the blades’ leading-edge erosion.
Solar power output can be declining a lot more than wind, by ~1% per day due to soiling in dusty and sandy environments without cleaning, which is underpinning the acute need for regular automated maintenance solution.
The global wind turbine O&M market size is estimated by 360iResearch to reach USD 36 bn in 2022. We estimate that today ~20% of that service can be delivered by robotic systems (inspection, repair, cleaning) growing penetration to ~30% in future, which makes the current addressable market ~USD 7 bn growing to over USD ~30 bn in 2030.
Robots are currently competing mainly with manual labour or no regular cleaning, and beat on direct and indirect costs, speed, quality and (most important for offshore wind) safety.
Wind robots:
a) Wind turbines require regular external and gearbox inspection, cleaning and blade maintenance
b) Drone inspection for wind farms is a more mature segment with several established players and proven technology. US market is estimated around $400 mln.
c) Drone inspection companies face more competition, featuring AI/image processing incumbent challenges, which is going to affect their margins, so our focus is on robots physically interacting with the blades and turbines.
d) Subsea offshore wind inspection also looks like a fast-growing niche and currently has only a few players.
Solar robots:
a) Solar cleaning robots, including wet and dry cleaning.
Dry solutions are best applied in sandy regions because of water shortage, higher output losses due to heavier soiling and bigger plants’ sizes.
Wet solutions are more suitable for milder climatic zones (e.g., Europe and Mediterranean), but require operators’ support to manage water supply.
b) Solar robots vary by size and method of action.
Lightweight mobile robots, often semi-automated, require an operator to supervise and move from row to row. They are a good fit for smaller farms or rooftop installations. We think this is the nearest addressable market, but it’s getting quickly commoditized by supplies from China.
Panel mounted units, which are installed one per array of panels, sometimes can be moved between arrays with additional transporting vehicle. Fast and reliable daily cleaning in MENA region, but maybe a challenge to use with solar trackers.
Ground based units which move between the rows. Usually these are the heavier and more expensive options, but they could be fully automated and service large scale sites.