Grow Renewable Energy Operations to Meet Demand

By Erik Orsino, Industry Account Manager, Eco Industrial - Renewable Energy, Rockwell Automation

Businesses across every industry are moving toward net-zero emissions and carbon neutrality, motivated by government incentives, shifting public demand, and the economic feasibility of renewable energy. In 2023 alone, renewable energy investments were estimated to reach a record-breaking 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars, outpacing projected fossil fuel investments.

Aside from meeting environmental goals, the transition to sustainability also helps manufacturers to improve financial performance and support long-term profitability. The demand for sustainable solutions is increasing as more companies set sustainability targets — and businesses are turning to renewable energy manufacturers for solutions to meet this rising demand.

Deliver Renewable Energy

While the energy transition is a remarkable opportunity for manufacturers producing renewable energy products, scaling to meet demand presents challenges. Scaling makes it difficult to maintain quality standards, especially when organizations are forced to contend with a shortage of skilled workers. Employee training and upskilling at scale — and maintaining compliance along the way — has never been more important, adding additional pressure to an industry in transformation.

Scaling to capture this opportunity, overcome dynamic challenges, and meet environmental stewardship goals along the way requires a new approach for renewable energy manufacturers. It starts with digitizing operations, empowering people, and optimizing production, all of which can be accomplished by adopting and augmenting operations with new, innovative technologies.

Digitize Operations

Many renewable manufacturing organizations today rely on manual and paper-based processes. While these processes are necessary and prevalent, they’re often inefficient and resource-intensive, and above all, challenging to scale.

For example, solar panel manufacturer First Solar was facing a rising demand for solar products and needed to scale manufacturing efforts by building new facilities closer to demand hubs. Together with Kalypso, a Rockwell Automation business, they were able to digitize their systems and break down information siloes to create a digital twin of their facilities that replicated physical operations.

This effort resulted in a data-driven operation with lower costs, reduced waste and improved visibility, control and productivity across production.

However, digitizing systems isn’t something that can be done instantly or haphazardly. It starts with connecting devices and machines and standardizing data, so systems speak the same language.

With the ability to capture and standardize data, renewable energy manufacturers can then leverage innovative solutions that unlock valuable insights. It’s possible to identify patterns, forecast demand, and make data-driven decisions by harnessing analytics and AI. This foresight is invaluable when planning for scale and helps ensure that products and services maintain high standards even as production volumes increase.

Scenarios like predictive maintenance allow manufacturers maintain operational continuity—proactively addressing downtime to improve fixed asset utilization. Digital twins simulate new processes or changes in a virtual environment before they are implemented in the real world to reduce the risk associated with scaling operations.

Upskill the Workforce, Empower Employees

With labor pools shrinking year after year, training and maintaining a skilled workforce is critical. Well-trained employees are more productive and can handle both increased workloads and complex tasks efficiently, allowing businesses to scale operations while the next generation of the workforce is trained.

Augmented reality (AR) tools help streamline the onboarding process by providing immersive and interactive training experiences to quickly boost new workers’ skills. Beyond onboarding, AR solutions also provide continuous learning opportunities for even the most skilled employees. Training employees to use the latest techniques and technologies ensures they stay adaptable and can take on new responsibilities as business expands.

Additionally, connecting employees digitally enables seamless communication and collaboration across teams and locations. Digital tools like smart devices and remote assistance solutions provide the flexibility to access operational information and perform tasks from almost anywhere.

These connected worker solutions enable the exchange of real-time information to reduce downtime, minimize the risk of accidents, and ensure that employees can make informed decisions promptly.

Achieve Environmental Goals

Manufacturers don’t need to compromise their own environmental initiatives as they scale. By keeping sustainability goals in mind from the start, they can reduce their environmental footprint and maintain ethical and environmental commitments as business expands.

AI-driven tools dynamically adjust processes in real-time based on predicted conditions to ensure enterprises stay agile while minimizing resource consumption. Specifically, advanced analytics can measure and monitor water, air, gas, energy, and steam (WAGES) usage and energy intensity—helping identify areas for improvement, pinpoint processes for optimization, and avoid safety and compliance risks.

Advanced monitoring and automation systems that leverage data from existing assets enable organizations to maximize their current investments and reduce overconsumption and waste.

Organizations can establish and improve upon baselines within their operations to help them achieve goals like reducing scope 1 and scope 2 emissions with these connected systems in place.

Increase Capacity

As connectivity and automation increase, so does cybersecurity risk. It’s important to take a proactive and holistic approach to operational technology cybersecurity, ensuring vulnerabilities are identified and addressed to safeguard critical infrastructure and data.

A breach in security can disrupt operations, compromise worker safety and result in significant financial losses. Investing in cybersecurity infrastructure isn’t just a best practice, it's a fundamental requirement as manufactiurers expand capacities.