Streamlining conventional power technologies   

Among the conventional power technologies, the foremost fields in terms of strategic importance are separating CO2 from combustion gases (such as the membrane technique with the purpose of final deep deposition of CO2), technologies for cascade power plants (such as high-temperature fuel cells and turbine materials for combined cycle power plants) and materials and structural durability in nuclear power plants. 

Regenerative energies 

For years, the utilization of wind power has been witnessing very high growth rates in Germany and various other areas in Europe. Since the continuance of highly ambitious expansion rates will soon engender a dearth of domestic high-yield sites, the trend in the next few years will be moving towards building offshore plants in shallow seas. The development agenda will include optimization of the structural durability of wings, towers and gear/generator units (107 cycles in their technical service life). However, these plants are also strained by the sea movements in offshore operation placing great requirements on their structural durability. 

In the last 20 years, the global production of photovoltaic modules increased to more than 500 MW of new capacities every year (a factor of 100) while the market is more than 90 per cent dominated by crystalline silicon wafer solar cells and in the same period of time its industrial efficiency in large-scale production has been boosted from 10 to roughly 16 per cent. Module efficiencies in excess of 20 per cent have been attained in small-series production. Challenges in downstream development of these technologies are in manufacturing highpurity silicon (solar grade silicon), cutting or producing thinner wafers (down to 50 µm), coming up with semiconductor materials and structures for wafer-, thin-film- and tandem-solar cells, dyes and polymer conductors for dye and organic solar cells, characterization techniques for the basic materials, encapsulation technologies for very long technical service life (in excess of 30 years) and methods for forecasting the service life of photovoltaic modules (accelerated aging). 

An issue that will be of interest in the future will be the concentrating photovoltaic power plants. The foremost aims will be enhanced optical concentrators and applicable module technologies along with producing superefficient solar cells based upon III-V semiconductor materials (targeting efficiencies of 40 per cent). 

The development of solar thermal power plants is presently being accelerated throughout the world. Some countries such as Spain or the south-western United States are staking their success on this technology by actively promoting its use. The World Bank also fosters the planning of power plant projects in Egypt and India. Although Germany is hardly the ideal location for operating such systems, German companies in this sector still have excellent opportunities for exporting this technology. Challenges remain in optics (selective solar absorbers and mirrors), storing thermal high-temperature energy and in the field of structural durability. 

Micro-power engineering/power supply to autonomous systems 

Many countries in the world have an underdeveloped power supply structure, spelling out a challenge in devising autonomous power supply technologies for remote applications. Power supply in rural regions of developing countries is an example. 

However, autonomous power supply technologies for remote applications also hold promise for a burgeoning number of communication devices in the low-power range. Take the example of distributed electronic intelligence, whose demand is constantly escalating due to increasing mobility. The potential solutions from micro-power engineering encompass fuel cells, built-in photovoltaic equipment, thermo- and piezoelectric devices and highly efficient batteries. 

There are competitive applications for autonomous technical power supplies, portable machines or electrification in developing countries. These are either available today or will be in the near future based upon regenerative energies for users in areas without power networks. Combinations with other technologies such as fuel cells or motor generators in hybrid systems are also promising.  The following are seen as major focus of development work: 

• batteries (such as ultrathin flat batteries), battery modeling and new types of electrochemical storage technologies 
  
• small PEM and SOFC fuel cells for a wide range of energy sources (such as hydrogen, natural gas, biogas, biomass and diesel reformate)
  
• piezoelectric energy transducers
  
• highly efficient solar cells and materials for very inexpensive organic solar cells for integration into other systems (such as price tags with electronic components)
  
• materials for solar cells built into clothing
  
• thermogenerators, thermophotovoltaic equipment and miniaturized turbines  

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