Market report on Organic Rankine Cycle power systems: recent developments and outlook

The Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is a thermal driven power cycle operated with an organic working fluid. It is especially suitable to exploit low to medium temperature heat sources at small to medium size capacity ranges. For these conditions, it outperforms the standard Clausius Rankine Cycles. Suitable heat sources can be either renewable in nature (i.e. biomass, solar, geothermal) or waste heat (i.e. mobile, stationary). The size of these power units ranges from very few kW to several dozen MW. It is the intention of this report to present an up-to-date overview on the recent developments in the ORC industry. This publication provides insights on the number and capacity of most of the installed ORC plants worldwide as well as the current and future market expectations from ORC manufacturer’s perspective. Information from 30 manufacturers, representing a total of more than 2600 projects have been collected and analyzed providing information on trends in the past and the market evolution during the last four years in terms of installed capacity and installed plants divided by application, macro region and manufacturer. At the end of 2020, the cumulated ORC installed capacity was 4.07 GW. Since 2016, the overall ORC market increased by 40 % (+1.18 GW) in terms of installed capacity and by 46 % (+851) in terms of installed plants. Regarding the capacity increase between 2016 and 2020, the largest increase is due to geothermal application (+970 MW, +45 %), while waste heat systems have the largest growth concerning the number of installed systems (628 plants, + 207 %). For the market survey, ten established ORC manufactures contributed their current and future perspective on the ORC market. The results highlight that, despite the impact of the COVID-19 situation, the current market situation is in good shape and that the majority of the manufacturers have positive expectations concerning the short-term development of both the ORC market and number of employment. Central and Eastern Europe as well as the ASEAN region are rated as the regions with the highest growth potential. Geothermal energy and small waste heat sources are seen as the most relevant heat sources for the coming year