Pushing Innovation in Renewable Energy Projects

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Developing renewable energy solutions that are scalable and efficient is critical to the global sustainability effort. Project leaders around the world are charged up about advancing and refining the innovations needed to turn this vision into reality.

IVÁN JARA

There is a consensus that we need renewable energy and [to] significantly reduce the CO2 footprint. We need to be innovative as individuals, but also as an industry to bring solutions that will help to accelerate this transition to a more renewable world.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified^®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified^®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

The energy sector is evolving as organizations and governments alike rethink their options to meet global efforts to decarbonize and push for a more sustainable future. And the shift toward renewable energy may soon reach an inflection point: McKinsey estimates that demand for oil will peak in the next five years, and demand for electricity is projected to triple by 2050. To deliver a meaningful sustainability benefit, electricity will need to be generated from clean, renewable sources such as solar, wind and wave energy, along with green hydrogen.

Today we’ll speak to a couple of project leaders engaged in those efforts. You heard earlier from Iván Jara at Atlas Renewable Energy in Chile, and we’ll return to him later. First, let’s hear from Meriem Lhammoumi, a senior project manager at engineering firm Jesa in Casablanca, Morocco. She’s leading projects related to green hydrogen production and its applications across industries, along with projects linked to energy generation from wave motion, solar and wind sources.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT

What drew you to green hydrogen projects in particular as you surveyed the field of renewable energy?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

Green hydrogen is one of the future fuels with great potential and [is an] important factor to the complete energy transition. It will be able to decarbonize several sectors on a national scale—that’s in Morocco—and generate foreign currency for the different countries through exports, of course. So green hydrogen will also be used to break away from dependence on natural gas and fossil fuel sources. In this case, of course, the technologies for producing green hydrogen—like electrolysis, fuel cells or even the different type of hydrogen transport and storage—will evolve over time and will have a great impact on the overall cost of the price of a kilogram of hydrogen. So obviously, I’m talking about the cost including the price of renewable electricity. My team in the sustainable projects must pursue the development of hydrogen closely and must always listen to the evaluation of this sector to better perform and see their projects’ progress.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How do you see green hydrogen fitting into the mix with other renewable energy solutions, such as wind and solar?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

It will increase, but right now, we have to focus on the cost and how to have low cost on the electrolysis and also on the storage of hydrogen. We have the technology; we can use it right now. What is really a challenge right now, it’s the cost.

The impacts of green hydrogen on the green energy in general, it will be really high because we’ll have a very good solution to be able to store energy at the time where we don’t have solar and wind or other renewable energies. At the same time, it can help us to not upgrade all the infrastructure of the green renewable energies, especially it will take more time. And here, we can always produce the hydrogen and transport it and use it like liquid or gas, depending on the application. I think that the impact is huge.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Green hydrogen involves several stages, from production and storage to transport. That’s a lot of technological pieces for teams to develop and manage. How does that impact what skills you’re looking for on your teams and how you lead?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

For us in our organization, renewable energy and green hydrogen are strategic markets. So we have been investing heavily in developing our capabilities internally through the hiring of SMEs (subject matters experts) and senior profiles, also internally by accelerating the development plans of resources with the right technical profile and high potential via their trainings, coaching and certifications. Furthermore, we can rely on [a] very talented group from our technology and design group. The best way right now is to go step by step and to take time to have higher capabilities and capacities to be able to manage correctly the future trend and the future of hydrogen.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s talk more about team composition. How do you develop the capacities and workflows needed to execute these projects and also gain lessons learned for larger ones in the future?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

In addition of technical expertise, we are trying to find someone who is participating in the implementation of the research and development projects. Also, we are trying to see someone who can work for the implementation of specific trainings for the team, to have the knowledge and experience in project management, the knowledge in designation with scientific and technical information development. Also, someone who is passionate. We’ll need someone who has this passion to adapt to the situation.

Also, the team should be agile and must have the ability to ask why it didn’t work if [something is] not working, and to be able to adapt to have good results at the end. So I think that in this area, especially the green hydrogen, the team and the project manager as leaders should be capable to manage in more complexity management to be able to find the best composition.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How do you try to get a team to be able to function amidst that uncertainty? Is it recruiting people with specific skills or experiences, or is it developing people from within the organization?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

Both of them, yeah. We are looking for SMEs plus project management— people that are experts in the area. They know exactly how to convince clients about the subjects before managing and leading the teams. So, the leader is someone who is putting people at the heart of what we are doing in the projects, and this is very important to bring together the technology development and also the people for the success of the projects.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What about beyond that vision and passion? We mentioned an embrace of agility and iteration earlier. Any other power skills that are especially relevant, not just to the project leader, but anyone on the team?

MERIEM LHAMMOUMI

[Yes], of course. Collaboration is important for all projects. Also, you are talking about collaboration with other companies, other technology providers. This is something very important for our organization to be able to make our team and a design that can be fruitful for our client.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT

Emerging technologies like green hydrogen are a big part of how renewable energy might supply a larger share of the world’s power. Another key element is the expansion of existing solutions such as solar and wind power.

Projectified^®’s Hannah LaBelle spoke with Iván Jara, head of engineering, procurement and construction at Atlas Renewable Energy in Santiago, Chile, about the Sol del Desierto solar plant. The 244-megawatt-peak solar plant is part of the Chilean Ministry of Energy’s decarbonization plan that aims to retire or convert half of the country’s coal-fired power plants by 2025.

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HANNAH LABELLE

So Sol del Desierto is one of the largest solar plants in Chile. It has nearly 583,000 solar panels spread across 479 hectares, or just under 1,200 acres. What impact will this solar plant have on renewable energy produced in Chile?

IVÁN JARA

This project is very essential for not only the country, but I will say for the whole transition process into renewable energy in the world. I think that was one of the key elements that motivated us to develop this project. In Chile, a big portion of the energy matrix is based on coal, and there are a lot of companies looking for renewable energy. We saw the opportunity. We quickly react with a project that was in development, and we offer a solution, a competitive solution. I will say that’s another important factor—how fast we react to the opportunities.

HANNAH LABELLE

The team developed and built the solar plant over the last few years, managing challenges brought on by the pandemic and supply chain issues. The plant has been fully operational for a few months now, so what value has the project delivered so far?

IVÁN JARA

Well, the most important one is that it is reliable energy for our client. But then, of course, we are helping [with] the energy transition. So we are reducing approximately 370,000 tons of CO2 per year, which is huge, delivering energy for almost 350,000 houses in the country, with the project operating officially with all certification from March but starting operations since mid-last year, and then completed all the commissioning process and confirming that the plant performance was as per we initially planned.

HANNAH LABELLE

The project also created positive social impact through a program that trained local workers, right?

IVÁN JARA

Yeah. I think this is one of the things that we really feel very proud [of]. From the beginning of the project, we also had in mind to work with local manpower and give the community a benefit. But on top of that, we also work to try to increase and promote [the] hiring of women. And in that regard, in preparation of the construction, we developed training programs to the local community, and a specific training to women that were interested to join and work in the construction.

It was the first time in Atlas that we implemented that kind of program, focused on diversity and inclusion. Initially it was not developed [by] setting kind of metrics in our EPC [engineering, procurement and construction] contract with construction companies, establishing a specific target. It was more on promoting them to work with us in achieving that goal. Around 15 percent of the workforce finally were women of the local areas, local facilities, working in different activities as technicians—civil, electrical, mechanical technicians—supervisors in different works, administrative roles, and also health and safety. And we feel really proud of having achieved that target, especially because of the positive influence in the community. But also, very important to mention that to me and for Atlas, the objective was not only the target that we set at the beginning of the project; it was more on trying to continue working on promoting that culture of diversity and inclusion with authorities, with the communities, and also with our contractors and partners to really implement that. Not because of we have [a] contractual target, but most importantly because we want to have that culture in our company.

HANNAH LABELLE

One innovative aspect of this project was the tech it used, like the bifacial solar panels. These panels generate energy from the top side of the panel as well as the back, and it looks like their use in commercial projects has been growing over the last few years. How did your team decide to use these panels for the project, and how do they affect the plant’s efficiency?

IVÁN JARA

The bifacial panels, the main characteristic is, as you mentioned, [it] has the option to also recover radiation from the rear side of the panel, not only the front side, because of the reflection of the radiation on the ground that is directed to the rear side of the panel. Two, three years ago, there [was] not so much information on that technology in terms of how much more energy it could produce. There were just kind of experimental tests and analyses.

We work with some of the suppliers to try to get more information on that. We established collaboration with suppliers by obtaining panels, install it in one of our existing facilities, setting up kind of [a] laboratory with different technologies, different configuration to try to—from an experimental point of view—understand how much gain we’ll get at the different condition from the bifacial panels until we created our own model of predicting extra production from bifacial panels. When we had sufficient information on that, we finally decide to select this technology for Sol del Desierto. So, we gain approximately 10 percent of extra production because of the gain of the rear side. The Sol del Desierto area is very good for that objective because of the capacity of the soil to obtain extra radiation. It is one of the biggest for that condition because it’s very reflective ground.

HANNAH LABELLE

What other innovative tech are you testing, either in the Sol del Desierto project or in pilots?

IVÁN JARA

Well, I think improving the efficiencies of the project is something that is key to provide competitive solutions. Looking for more efficient solutions that are more on the experimental side that we can test in pilot projects to check their behavior is something that we are always working on it. With some other suppliers and based on our continuous innovation approach, we are testing different technologies of panels that will bring us extra efficiency. So it is an industry that is always evolving, and in order to capture that evolution, we normally stay working together with our suppliers to understand what innovation they are considering to quickly implement that in our project as testing to validate assumptions or performance so that we can then move it and implement it into our utility-scale projects.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT

The race is on to see how quickly project teams around the world can develop and deploy renewable energy sources that are capable of supporting the majority of the world’s power needs. It’s a high-stakes transition, and the teams undertaking this work will require plenty of their own fuel, such as innovation, collaboration and inspiration.

NARRATOR

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