A few months ago I went to this Ethiopean restaurant which had a very interesting poster. It was one of an arid street in Ethiopia and a kid having a coke with the text below saying – “Ethiopia – 13 months of summer“. This very thought came to my mind when the monsoons started in August for most parts of the country this year. The world is changing and not nearly as planned. We are fighting over greenhouse emissions as if its our “birthright” to pollute and the Americans are keeping us from realizing it. And of course its raining lesser.
Some of these thoughts came up in our discussion (Ashish and I) and I am back here to write mostly about “green” and sometimes about technology. One motive of these posts is also to learn from you through comments / discussions what we can do in India in terms of innovation in sustainable technologies which can help improve lives in general.
Technology to make lives better – Solar
Everyone knows that solar energy is the biggest source of sustainable energy and the energy for the future. For starters, most of the cost in solar energy is the fixed cost with almost negligible variable (running) costs. As logic would indicate, mass adoption of solar energy will always remain a dream till generation of solar energy costs lesser than fossil fuels. Apart from this however what are the factors that stop us from adopting solar energy as a mass mode of energy creation?
- Solar energy is not available directly at night, therefore systems based purely on solar energy have to have storage for intermediate forms of energy created (like electricity).
- In terms of conversion of solar energy into alternate usable energy types, the two most common forms are – heat and electricity. Both these conversions are highly inefficient – (12-18% conversions possible) although there is scope for research here and some educational institutes are doing it already. There is also a loss in converting from DC to AC.
- Fixed costs in setting up solar energy stations (Photovoltaic) is costly – however some companies like Solyndra and research at PARC have made some intelligent changes thereby using lesser photovoltaic cells but covering a larger area.
- Large areas needed for mass scale production – Unlike other forms, solar energy does require large areas to tap sunlight. As most of know, land costs are non trivial in India and (along with transmission) I see this as a major deterrent.
So where do you think we can innovate and better utilise this resource? What are the unique opportunities and challenges that India poses which will help us tackle this problem better?
Some of the questions that often crop up in such discussions are -
- What are the next gen focus areas for harnessing solar energy?
- How can we make intelligent use of sustainable sources of energy and overcome challenges (like 12 hours of sunshine etc)
- Avoiding transmission losses and thereby reducing wastage
- Whats the pay-back period that we can look at?
- Is there an advantage in economies of scale? How do we have economies of scale while prices and adoption is low?
Lets us know your questions / thoughts / ideas.
In most of my blog posts, I would be writing about such topics which hold relevance for us in terms of technology and science – but also typically important to us in terms of India and the environment as such. As always, all kinds of feedback and discussions will be appreciated. We surely don’t want the rain to go to Spain – do we?
If you see from a distance Pratyush, solar energy is a great solution for rural India where agglomeration is small-sized, land prices are down-to-earth and consumption as well as traditional transmission methods are un-viable.
GOI already does this kind of research and you can find pretty great investments near Northern Orissan Villages through joint effort & philanthropy of local government & corporates like Tatas and SAIL.
Pretty thought provoking post…:-)
There is a potential of 45,195 MW of wind energy in India and 25% of it is already achieved. However, there are no estimates about the potential of solar energy in India.
For solar energy sky is the only limit, literally. It costs 20 crore rupees to set-up a 1 MW solar power plant. Each unit of electricity from solar plant costs 15 rupees per unit.
That has to come down drastically to make it viable. Private players can only do so much but the biggest fillip should come from the Government.
If India has to realize its 20GW from solar energy plan an insane amount of money should be spent on research. Especially on a battery which can store all the energy produced from solar sources.
http://www.indianomics.com/2009/08/12/state-of-renewable-energy-in-india/
@Arvind – Thanks for the comments. Provoking discussion and ideas is the main intent here. New factoid about Orissa government research – will follow up on that one
@Sriram – You brought up another aspect of research about which I have an eternal crib. And thats batteries. Battery technology hasnt evolved fast at all and its now the long pole in a lot of such scenarios. Also most of the battery technologies are highly dangerous and pollute the heck out of the environment. In terms of size also, they have remained almost the same.
I do wholeheartedly agree about Govt support for renewable sources of energy – but as we all know, it needs some private players taking a leap of faith and pushing for these regulations.
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Pratyush,
Yes, Solar energy is costly, but to whom?
Check out Selco(http://www.selco-india.com/). They are working with grass roots people providing them with Solar energy for over a decade now.
All things need not come from the government and all things need not be done with loads of money.
The need is for smart financial, prudent official strategies to make solar more relevant source of energy. I am in fact happy to see a lot of street lights in Bangalore being Solar powered.
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Excellent topic chosen by you guys for the fortnight, more relevant now than ever.
Absolutely completely agree with Ramjee.
For starters, Solar may not be thought as a “replacement” to conventional electricity, but more as a supplementary source of energy. On the other hand, thinking beyond the urban scenario, solar can greatly benefit the rural population as demonstrated by Selco.
@Pratyush,
Thanks for a great summary of issues.
Is it true that it takes more energy to create a solar cell than it generates in its entire lifetime (say 20 years)?
If so, can PV technology be really called green?
I am happy to be told I am ill-informed. However, any resources you or others commenting here can point me to which can either prove or disprove this will be appreciated.
Thanks.
Thanks for your comments – they have been both inspiring and educating.
@Ramjee – Thanks for the info about Selco. I had heard about them but didnt know they have led with such innovation. The purpose of my “costly” comment is to help understand if there are technologies (in solar cells or beyond them) to make this form of energy even cheaper. Have we reached the top of the curve yet? I would think not.
@Deepesh – Absolutely agree. I think my post (and I admit my thought process)treated it as a energy replacement – which it shouldnt be. It makes sense to start substituting intelligently.
@Anindya – Theoretically yes. However thats what companies like SolFocus attack. They use simple optics to concentrate a lot of light over an area into a very small photocell (efficiency is not very affected). In effect the cost of the cell decreases along with the energy going into making it.
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Pratyush,
I came across a company called Nanosolar http://www.nanosolar.com who claim that they produce solar PV cells that drastically reduce cost of generation. They are also partly funded by Google. But, I wonder why they can’t license their technology so that it is widely adopted. Or are they mad enough to think that they will produce all the PV cells that the world needs!!!!
@Joseph nanosolar has brought about a new technology after some ground breaking research on using nano-scale particles to collect sun rays (visibile & invisble spectrums both) thereby increasing ‘exposure area of the cell’. The news is fairly recent.
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We too often see solar as a single technology whereas in reality it covers a whole gamut of technologies each of which is undergoing research. Having said that research in India in solar is still very limited and only happens at a university level. There are hardly any solar related technology patents being filed in India. From the policies perspective although the claims are many yet the reality of the situation is that the available subsidies do not even start addressing the scale of the problem that solar is supposed to address. And let’s face it without the commerce in favor of it not even any of you are gonna be adopting a solar product in the near future. Even from a projects perspective we lack the execution capability in the absence of local technology partners. And information is hard to obtain on the state of the industry in general in India.
The environment is no doubt challenging but the good news is that it can only stand to improve from here on.
Every body talks but is it easily available in big cities like Mumbai and
Delhi where power problem is too much and if Government agencies will give direct boost by making person to person contact then it will be very good idea for power making and carbon policy for India
Thank you, for informing about eco-friendly company’s. These companies pledge to SAVE MOTHER EARTH. To earn my living in a eco friendly way, i intend to work in a organization which generates electricity from non conventional energy sources.
thank you.