Top Renewable Energy in 2024

From wave-riding power harvesters to artificial suns, lots of companies are working toward developing new ways to produce energy more sustainably. Here are some of the most exciting renewable energy technologies we're keeping an eye on in 2024.

The Waveline Magnet is a long yellow raft that can harness wave energy for desalination, producing hydrogen fuel and generating electricity. This prototype has been developing for over 10 years, resulting in a unique design.

Waveline Magnet is a wave energy converter (WEC) developed by Sea Wave Energy Ltd (SWEL), a R&D company based in Cyprus and the UK. The WEC is designed to capture the kinetic energy of waves and convert it into electricity. It is made up of an array of floating platforms linked via a central power system. The platforms are flexible and can move with the waves, which helps to reduce the amount of stress on the system. The Waveline Magnet is also designed to be a modular, lightweight, and low-cost energy converter that seamlessly follows wave movement in any water environment. SWEL claims that a single Waveline Magnet device, scaled to suit the wave climate at EMEC, would satisfy more than the hub's current grid-connection capabilities. The company has been focused on the design and development of its wave energy converter for more than 10 years achieving numerous patents. The technology is a robust and durable WEC that can supply substantial power on demand at a low cost, with minimal maintenance, and can be deployed in any wave environment.

Harnessing wave energy, or wave power, for electricity generation can be challenging due to various technical, environmental, and economic factors. While the concept of using ocean waves as a renewable energy source is promising, there are several complexities associated with its implementation.

The device consists of several floating platforms connected in a spine-like configuration allowing it to smoothly adapt to the movement of ocean waves. This adaptability ensures controlled and non-disruptive energy extraction. This design is not only flexible but also cost-effective, as it can be manufactured using readily available materials like plastic and reinforced plastics, reducing production, repair, and maintenance expenses. Under favorable conditions, a single wave line magnet can generate up to 100 MW of power making it competitive with fossil fuels in terms of energy production costs. The Waveline magnet represents a significant step towards tapping into the untapped potential of ocean energy providing a renewable and environmentally friendly alternative to meet growing energy demands while reducing carbon emissions.

This approach has the potential to revolutionize the wave energy industry and contribute to a more sustainable energy future.

Another tough nut to crack has been fusion power. While critics say it always seems to be at least a decade away, significant milestones keep getting passed and each one brings the potential of a partially fusion-powered future closer to reality. In December of 2022, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved its first net energy gain, meaning the team produced a fusion reaction that generated more energy than the amount required to trigger the reaction. This feat was repeated in July of 2023, producing an even higher energy yield.

Providing energy from nuclear fusion is widely regarded as a grand engineering of the 21st century. Unlike fission, where the atom is split to produce energy. In fusion, two lighter atomic nuclei are merged to form a heavier nucleus. This is how stars transmute matter into energy. This is the main goal of plasma physics research. To make fusion power commercially viable several serious technological challenges will have to be overcome. A plasma with temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius which is 10 times higher than in the core of the sun has to be confined and controlled using the largest magnetic fields ever produced to find the right materials and the mechanism that will extract and convert the enormous amount of energy, are also among the major challenge in producing electricity from fusion.

Today, many countries take part in fusion research to some extent, led by the European Union, the USA, Russia, and Japan, with vigorous programs also underway in China, Brazil, Canada, and Korea.

According to IAEA - (International Atomic Energy Agency) Fusion is among the most environmentally friendly sources of energy. There are no CO2 or other harmful atmospheric emissions from the fusion process, which means that fusion does not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions or global warming. Its two sources of fuel, hydrogen, and lithium, are widely available in many parts of the Earth.