Converging technologies describes the development of different technologies into a single new technology. The origin was framed early on e.g to describe the relation between medicin and engineering, resulting in new technologies like biomedical engineering. Today the term is frequently used within the media landscape, where the present smart mobile telephones combine a set of different technologies.
To quote Wikipedia:
“Technological convergence, is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance.”
Within the field of energy, we see similar trends that CET2022 is addressing, where different technologies like energy storage, hydrogen production, district heating, smart grid, nuclear, hydro, wind and solar power are integrated to form a new smart energy system. The advance of small nuclear reactors (SMR) is central in speeding up the process of converging energy technologies.
