NEW AND RENEWABLE ENERGY

China leads solar PV demand in Asia Pacific region with 2.9GW installed in 2011

2012-01-29T13:21:00.000+05:30

The sleeping giant has finally awoken, according to the latest report from NPD Solarbuzz as PV installations in China reached 2.9GW in 2011, a massive 500% increase over 2010. The Asia Pacific region as a whole saw demand increase 165% year-on-year, reaching a total of 6GW. Like Germany, NPD Solarbuzz noted that 2.8GW of installations in the region were installed in the fourth quarter alone.

According to the market research firm, China has quickly emerged as the dominant force in the region, with 48% of 2011 demand. A planned year-end 13% FIT reduction led to a surge in installations in the fourth quarter, reaching 1.7GW, NPD Solarbuzz noted.

“The China PV market was reshaped in 2011 by the release of the national FIT,” said Ray Lian, analyst at NPD Solarbuzz, “Approximately 1GW ground mount projects were installed in the Qinghai province alone. However, the explosive growth could well be followed by policy adjustments in 2012 as the Chinese central government takes action to control the growth rate.”

However, the market research firm noted that low factory gate module prices and favorable project returns have led to a project pipeline that reached 20GW and in direct comparison the project pipeline estimates for the US.

Japan

Other major markets in the Asia Pacific region include Japan and India. Though dependent on the residential market (70% plus of installations), Japan installed 1.2GW in 2011, an increase of 30% over 2010.

However, NPD Solarbuzz expects the Japanese market to grow 40% in 2012 as a new FIT law aimed at large-scale PV projects should increase demand, though highlighted that the actual 2012 rates have yet to be announced.

Many forecasters had previously touted Japan to once again become a major growth market but a forecasted growth of 40% could disappoint many in the PV industry, especially considering the growth in overseas module suppliers moving into the Japanese market in anticipation of strong growth.

India

According to NPD Solarbuzz, demand in India increased by 125% in the fourth quarter, as install deadlines loomed in the first quarter of 2012. The market research firm expects 600MW to be grid connected in the first quarter under the National Solar Mission and Gujarat Solar Policies.

In 2012, the Indian market could begin to approach 1GW, driven by new installations under the National Solar Mission and new state-level policies.

"While rapid PV price declines have greatly improved project economics over the course of 2011, many Indian developers have suffered setbacks due to difficulties associated with financial closure, land acquisition, and power evacuation facilities. Now developers will need to race to meet their installation deadlines or face the prospect of losing their PPAs, leading to a surge of activity in December and January," added NPD Solarbuzz analyst Chris Sunsong.

Australia

Australia’s PV installations fell 10% quarter-on-quarter as incentive schemes were closed down. NPD Solarbuzz expected first quarter 2012 installs to make further declines of around 20%.

Worse, the market for 2012 is forecast to fall by 30%; however, the market is forecast to pick up in 2013 as large-scale ground-mounted systems begin to come online.

Thailand, Korea and Taiwan

Other emerging markets in Asia added 500MW of demand in 2011, largely driven by Thailand, Korea and Taiwan, noted the market research firm. Further growth of more than 50% is expected in 2012 as new markets in Malaysia and the Philippines evolve.

Government incentives and continued declines in module prices are set to underline the growth potential in this rapidly emerging important market for the PV industry.

Ref: Solarbuz.com

Scientists create first solar cell with over 100 percent quantum efficiency

2011-12-26T13:01:00.000+05:30

Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the solar spectrum.

The external quantum efficiency for photocurrent, usually expressed as a percentage, is the number of electrons flowing per second in the external circuit of a solar cell divided by the number of photons per second of a specific energy (or wavelength) that enter the solar cell. None of the solar cells to date exhibit external photocurrent quantum efficiencies above 100 percent at any wavelength in the solar spectrum.

The external quantum efficiency reached a peak value of 114 percent. The newly reported work marks a promising step toward developing Next Generation Solar Cells for both solar electricity and solar fuels that will be competitive with, or perhaps less costly than, energy from fossil or nuclear fuels.

Multiple Exciton Generation is key to making it possible

A paper on the breakthrough appears in the Dec. 16 issue of Science Magazine. Titled “Peak External Photocurrent Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 100 percent via MEG in a Quantum Dot Solar Cell,” it is co-authored by NREL scientists Octavi E. Semonin, Joseph M. Luther, Sukgeun Choi, Hsiang-Yu Chen, Jianbo Gao, Arthur J. Nozikand Matthew C. Beard. The research was supported by the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the DOE Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Semonin and Nozik are also affiliated with the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The mechanism for producing a quantum efficiency above 100 percent with solar photons is based on a process called Multiple Exciton Generation (MEG), whereby a single absorbed photon of appropriately high energy can produce more than one electron-hole pair per absorbed photon.

NREL scientist Arthur J. Nozik first predicted in a 2001 publication that MEG would be more efficient in semiconductor quantum dots than in bulk semiconductors. Quantum dots are tiny crystals of semiconductor, with sizes in the nanometer (nm) range of 1-20 nm, where 1 nm equals one-billionth of a meter. At this small size, semiconductors exhibit dramatic effects because of quantum physics, such as:

• Rpidly increasing bandgap with decreasing quantum dot size,

• Formation of correlated electron-hole pairs (called excitons) at room temperature,

• Enhanced coupling of electronic particles (electrons and positive holes) through Coulombic forces,

• And enhancement of the MEG process.

Quantum dots confine the charges and harvest excess energy

Quantum dots, by confining charge carriers within their tiny volumes, can harvest excess energy that otherwise would be lost as heat – and therefore greatly increase the efficiency of converting photons into usable free energy.

The researchers achieved the 114 percent external quantum efficiency with a layered cell consisting of antireflection-coated glass with a thin layer of a transparent conductor, a nanostructured zinc oxide layer, a quantum dot layer of lead selenide treated with ethanedithol and hydrazine, and a thin layer of gold for the top electrode.

In a 2006 publication, NREL scientists Mark Hanna and Arthur J. Nozik showed that ideal MEG in solar cells based on quantum dots could increase the theoretical thermodynamic power conversion efficiency of solar cells by about 35 percent relative to today’s conventional solar cells. Furthermore, the fabrication of Quantum Dot Solar Cells is also amenable to inexpensive, high-throughput roll-to-roll manufacturing.

Such potentially highly efficient cells, coupled with their low cost per unit area, are called Third (or Next) Generation Solar Cells. Present day commercial photovoltaic solar cells are based on bulk semiconductors, such as silicon, cadmium telluride, or copper indium gallium (di)selenide; or on multi-junction tandem cells drawn from the third and fifth (and also in some cases fourth) columns of the Periodic Table of Elements. All of these cells are referred to as First- or Second-Generation Solar Cells.

MEG, also referred to as Carrier Multiplication (CM), was first demonstrated experimentally in colloidal solutions of quantum dots in 2004 by Richard Schaller and Victor Klimov of the DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since then, many researchers around the world, including teams at NREL, have confirmed MEG in many different semiconductor quantum dots. However, nearly all of these positive MEG results, with a few exceptions, were based on ultrafast time-resolved spectroscopic measurements of isolated quantum dots dispersed as particles in liquid colloidal solutions.

The new results published in Science by the NREL research team is the first report of MEG manifested as an external photocurrent quantum yield greater than 100 percent measured in operating quantum dot solar cells at low light intensity; these cells showed significant power conversion efficiencies (defined as the total power generated divided by the input power) as high as 4.5 percent with simulated sunlight. While these solar cells are un-optimized and thus exhibit relatively low power conversion efficiency (which is a product of the photocurrent and photovoltage), the demonstration of MEG in the photocurrent of a solar cell has important implications because it opens new and unexplored approaches to improve solar cell efficiencies.

Another important aspect of the new results is that they agree with the previous time-resolved spectroscopic measurements of MEG and hence validate these earlier MEG results. Excellent agreement follows when the external quantum efficiency is corrected for the number of photons that are actually absorbed in the photoactive regions of the cell. In this case, the determined quantum yield is called the internal quantum efficiency. The internal quantum efficiency is greater than the external quantum efficiency because a significant fraction of the incident photons are lost through reflection and absorption in non-photocurrent producing regions of the cell. A peak internal quantum yield of 130% was found taking these reflection and absorption losses into account.

More information: Peak External Photocurrent Quantum Efficiency Exceeding 100% via MEG in a Quantum Dot Solar Cell, Science 16 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6062 pp. 1530-1533. DOI: 10.1126/science.1209845

Paint-On Solar Cells Developed

2011-12-22T18:24:00.002+05:30

A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.

"We want to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology," says Prashant Kamat, John A. Zahm Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an investigator in Notre Dame's Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano), who leads the research.

"By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we've made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment."

The team's search for the new material, described in the journal ACS Nano, centered on nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, which were coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. The particles were then suspended in a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.

When the paste was brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it created electricity.

"The best light-to-energy conversion efficiency we've reached so far is 1 percent, which is well behind the usual 10 to 15 percent efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells," explains Kamat.

"But this paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities. If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future."

"That's why we've christened the new paint, Sun-Believable," he adds.

Kamat and his team also plan to study ways to improve the stability of the new material.

NDnano is one of the leading nanotechnology centers in the world. Its mission is to study and manipulate the properties of materials and devices, as well as their interfaces with living systems, at the nano-scale.

This research was funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

Ref: Science Daily

The way towards Cop 18 in Qatar

2011-12-16T21:52:00.002+05:30

Countries at the United Nations climate change negotiations have publicly acknowledged their current pledges to reduce carbon emissions will not result in limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius.

To bridge this shortfall, delegates at the 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) climate talks proposed on to address this so-called "emissions gap" at COP 18 in Qatar next year.

Documents negotiated in Durban, South Africa acknowledged the science-based emissions reduction target of 25 to 40 percent by 2020. Those reductions and that timeline are what is needed to stay below two degrees Celsius. The draft text says this would be the target to be agreed on at COP 18.

"We need agreement on that science-based target next year at the latest," said Karl Hood, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Caribbean island of Grenada and representing the Alliance of Small Island States.

"And we want those targets to legally come into force before 2017."

Hood told IPS waiting to close the gap until after 2020 is "unacceptable" and a "disaster for small island states" who are already suffering the impacts of climate change.

The world has months to curb emissions from burning fossil fuels before two degrees Celsius of warming will be impossible to stay below. Delay a few years and the extraordinary emission cuts needed could bankrupt the world's economy and reverse development gains in most countries, climate experts warned at the largely deadlocked United Nations climate change conference here.

"We're here to warn policy makers that we are dangerously close to not being able to meet the less than two degrees Celsius target," said Bill Hare, Director of Climate Analystics, a non-profit climate science advisory group based in Germany.

The current pledges made by countries to cut emissions after the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 will result in global warming of 3.5 degrees Celsius, said Hare a climate scientist. Two years later, those pledges remain essentially unchanged and that means the world's options to stay below two degrees Celsius are narrowing Hare said in press conference during the COP 17 negotiations that conclude Friday.

"To put it bluntly, the longer we wait, the less option we will have, the more it will cost ...and the bigger threat to the world’s most vulnerable," he said.

Global emissions of fossil fuels have increased 49 percent since 1990 and reached a record of about 48 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of CO2 in 2010 and likely 50 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 this year, he said. Thanks to the moderating affect of the oceans, the world has warmed only 0.8 degrees Celsius on average, however, many parts of the world are much warmer than that.

The science shows that global emissions need to fall to 44 Gt by 2020 and continue to decline by two percent per year, a rate that our fossil fuel-dependent world will find "extremely challenging" but still doable, he said.

If countries live up to their pledges made in Copenhagen global emissions are likely to rise nine to 11 Gt above the 44 Gt target creating an "emissions gap" that is quite considerable, said Niklas Höhne, Director Energy and Climate Policy of Ecofys, an energy consulting organization.

"Our results are in agreement with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Bridging the Emissions Gap Report released at the opening of the Durban climate talks," he told IPS.

The new UNEP report calculates a similar emission gap and outlines the way reductions can be made between now and 2020 to bridge that gap. Shockingly many of the items under intense debate at here at the COP 17 — biofuels, agriculture, carbon credits for forest protection, carbon capture and storage — are not considered important pathways to reduce emissions by scientists.

"With biofuels you have to be very sure they won't result in a net increase in emissions," said Höhne.

A number of new studies of palm oil biodiesel and maize ethanol show their net emissions are higher than fossil fuels when their entire lifecycle is calculated.

Biofuels are unlikely to be a significant method for reducing emissions, agreed Höhne. Agriculture is in the same category. Farming practices could be altered to reduce emissions but based on analysis using various reduction scenarios they would only be a small part of the "bridge.”

The emissions gap can only be bridged with a combination of improving energy efficiency in all sectors, significant increase in renewable energy including biomass power and shifting from coal to natural gas. The cost of making this shift is relatively low at 38 dollars a ton of CO2 avoided.

Ref:The Madison Times

1411 MW Wind capacity added in India during the first half of the Indian Financial Year

2011-12-11T19:19:00.002+05:30

Wind power has shown remarkable growth over the past decade, with the global cumulative installed capacity reaching 215 GW by June 2011. By 2015, installations are predicted to grow at an annual average rate of 15.5%, with the annual installed capacity growing to 81.4 GW from the current 39.5 GW (2010), including offshore development. India has maintained its position as one of the leading wind power nations, remaining at fifth position worldwide in terms of cumulative installations in 2011. The Indian wind industry has successfully weathered the economic slowdown encountered by many other nations and is moving towards achieving maturity. Presently, the country has a cumulative installed capacity of 15,567 MW. The capacity addition for FY 2011-12 is expected to be around 3,000 MW, out of which 1,411 MW has already been achieved. According to the estimates, the annual capacity increase for the Indian wind market is expected to reach 5000 MW by 2015.

Tremendous achivement is there in India in terms of capacity addition in Wind Energy. Based on some reliable sources, around 1411 MW wind power capacity has been added in India during the period from April-2011 to Sept-2011 of the FY 2011-12 which is the highest capacity addition during the first half of any Financial year in India.

Indian State wise capacity addition during the period April-2011 to September-2011 is as under.

Sl.No. -    Indian State      - Capacity (MW)

1.      Andhra Pradesh       -    11.50

2.       Gujarat                      - 251.00

3.       Karnataka                 - 93.30

4.        Madhya Pradesh        -   54.20

5.        Maharashtra               - 150.80

6.        Rajasthan                  - 226.35

7.         Tamilnadu                 -  624.30

             Total                        - 1411.45

About 14 WTG manufacturers were involved in this capacity addition in various capacities, major being Suzlon Energy, Enercon, Regn Powertech, Gamesa, Vesta Wind, Inox Wind, Letner Shriram, Gobal, RRB Energy etc. Mjor addition is done by Suzlon Energy with 510.35 MW, Enercon added 315.20 MW, Regen Powertech added 199.50 MW, Gamesa with 165.75 MW and Vestas Wind with 86.10 MW.

This clearly shows the intensity of WTG capacity addition going on India which will continue in the later par of the financial year as well.

Despite the financial crisis affecting the western world, Indian Renewable Energy Sector shows strong growth which may be the reason for major forign players investing in India along with the domestic WTG manufacturers.

JNNSM Phase I Batch 2 -Solar Power reaching the Grid Parity in India

2011-12-07T13:42:00.003+05:30

This was a fantastic news for all of us involved in Grid based Large Solar photovoltaic Projects. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) is bringing Indian solar sector to the new heights. The turning point is that for the first time Solar Photovoltaic Power in India is closing to the grid parity with the lowest bid being Rs.7.49 ($ 0.146) per kilowatt hour (/kWh). I could sense the enthusiasm when I visited the SOLARCON conference at Hyderabad, where the speculations were there that this time the bids will be still coming down from the previous one. Lot of US and European based companies had set up booths at SOLARCON like Solar Semiconductor, Azure Power, BERGEN Power, SunEdison etc.

Aggressive bidding has taken place at the JNNSM Phase 1 Batch II. A very aggressive bidding round was seen at the Scope Complex Auditorium for the Batch II of Phase 1 of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSN). Solar Direct Emerges was the lowest bidder at Rs.7.49/kWh, while Green Infra was the highest bidder at Rs.9.39/kWh.

Other developers such as Welspun - it quoted three projects at Rs.7.97, Rs.8.05 and Rs.8.14/kWh; SunEdison at Rs.9.28/kWh; Mahindra Bids at Rs.9.34/kWh; Sai Sudhir at Rs.8.22/kWh; VS Lignite at Rs.8.54/kWh; and Sunborne Energy at Rs.8.99/kWh.

Meanwhile, Punj Lloyd offered no disount this time. Inderpreet Wadhwa led Azure Power and quoted a very aggressive price of Rs.7.91/kWh (50 megawatts); Sujana Energy at 9.09/kWh; and Kiran Energy quoted Rs.9.34/kWh for a 50 MW project. Green Infra emrged as the highest bidder, having quoted Rs.9.39/kWh.

This has set a trend on the one side making solar energy closer than ever to grid parity while on the other it has presented a big challenge for these projects to achieve financial closure and prove viability.

This bidding for the Solar PV project allotment under the second round of JNNSM phase I and the results from the bidding has shown signs of solar becoming genuinely cost competitive with grid power. While sub 10 bids were obviously expected, the bid price falling below 8 was indeed amazing for many developers and experts.

The Rs 10.59/kWh bid during the first round of bidding during the previous year, resulted in serious discussion over whether the developers are trying to pull wool over the eyes of the general public and more importantly the lender community.

Similar to the previous year results, the new numbers that were out yesterday too has resulted in a lot of debate. With severe penalty clauses in the second round this year and considerable learning during the last year, the discount that could be offered was never expected to cross 50% but all the assumptions and predictions are here to be bulldozed in the solar PV industry. Though the numbers might seem unreasonable at first sight, if one gives a proper thought over it, we would understand that these developers had every reason to submit such lower quote.

As earlier said, the French company Solaire Direct created shock in the industry with an unimaginable Rs7.49/kWh which was just close to grid parity.

Solardirect is the second largest solar power company in France. The company has quoted the so called ‘rock bottom’ price possibly as a part of market entry strategy as they have big plans of entering and growing in the Indian market. The latest report on photovoltaic support schemes released by the French government has caused haywire in the industry since the government threatens to severely curtail incentives including a potential annual cap of 500 MW. The French company has a pressing need to expand their market presence and India being one of the most promising market, the company had shown serious interest in the country with an anticipated target of 25 MW in the year 2011-2012. Also, the company has now saved loads of money which they would otherwise have spent on marketing. They have managed to hit all the headlines and gained extremely significant visibility in the country and all without any phenomenal marketing investments. All the revenues saved could come handy when they implement and operate the historic Rs 7.49/kWh project. The calculative risk and the low bid price is all a part of the market entry strategy.

Welspun Solar, with three different bid prices emerged second only to Solairedirect. Three different price levels and a 50MW clean sweep – and there is definitely some serious thought process behind their high discount bids. For Welspun, solar is of strategic importance and they are well on their way to become the bid daddy of Solar PV power generation sector in India. Project allotments in the first round of JNNSM phase I and projects from Gujarat state policy would have given them very good learning’s and confidence to go all out to secure 50MW and do not forget, they are on the fray to get projects allotted in Karnataka policy too. With past experience (something which is a rarity in the niche solar PV sector in India), the company definitely would have working relationships with EPC companies, module makers, inverter and other BoS manufacturers, lenders etc. The past experiences and associations comes in handy not only for Welspun, but a similar situation exist for a few other renowned solar PV developers like Azure Power, Mahindra Solar, Kiran Energy, Sai Sudhir Energy, Sun Edison India, Green Infra and Sun Borne Energy. All these companies have made the early mover advantage to their fullest benefit and managed to get projects allotted by quoting competitive yet viable prices.

There can be a number of arguments to justify the low bid prices, but we have to wait and see that how these companies are achieving financial closures with these lower tariffs.

Export-Import Bank of America, OPIC will be one of the sought after destinations for many of the victorious developers other than Azure Power. It is however surprising to know that two other well known developers – Punj Lloyd and Acme Solar who were EXIM bank beneficiaries in their previous projects, did not quote competitive prices to emerge victorious.

Deadline for achieving financial closure in the second round of JNNSM phase I has been raised to 210 days (7 months) from the earlier 180 days (6 months). The timeline for the commissioning of the project is also extended by a month – to 13 months from the date of signing PPA from 12 months earlier in batch I. With one more month of additional time coming in as a cushion for the victorious developers, one would have to wait and watch the actions that are to unfold in the days to come.

Now the challenge is to accomplish the projects as per the schedules after signing the PPAs. Of course, most of these developers can benefit from their previous experience in India in setting up Solar Photovoltaic Projects. I am sure that Solar will overtake Wind Energy sector in India if this enthusiasm and spirit prevails which can replace several tons of carbon dioxide otherwise would have produced with fossil fuel based power plants.

Managing wind variability in a Wind Farm

2011-11-30T23:27:00.003+05:30

As Texas’ electric grid operator prepares to add power lines for carrying future wind-generated energy, an electrical engineer at The University of Texas at Austin is developing improved methods for determining the extent to which power from a wind farm can displace a conventional power plant, and how best to regulate varying wind power.

“The cost of wind energy has become competitive with that of energy from fossil fuels because of technology improvements,” said Assistant Professor Surya Santoso. “Unfortunately, electric power generated from wind energy is intermittent and variable. That means we need to have better measurements of wind power plants’ output as we integrate wind energy into existing power systems. We also need to develop a way of managing wind power so it can be more readily called upon when needed.”

Texas has outstripped California since 2006 as the leading national producer of wind power, with most of the state’s renewable energy goal by 2025 focused on wind power. To help meet this goal, the state’s Electric Reliability Council of Texas is expected to add about 1,500 megawatts of new wind generation this year alone. In late September, Texas also awarded four offshore tracts along the Gulf Coast for wind power projects with a generating capacity of 1,150 megawatts.

Santoso is developing two strategies to manage and overcome the intermittent and variable behavior of wind power. With a two-year, $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, he and his students are developing computational methods to measure the actual capacity contribution of wind farms. This will allow system planners to calculate how much a wind farm can contribute to meeting expected power needs.

Santoso’s lab is also using the funding to establish the technical requirements of energy storage systems that would serve as temporary ”batteries” for releasing stored wind energy at optimal times.

“Having a proper energy storage system would allow you to harness free wind when it’s available, but release that energy at the time of your choosing with a desired power profile,” Santoso said. He noted that a wind energy storage system would also increase wind farms’ overall capacity contribution and reduce the likelihood of overloading transmission power lines that must carry energy from different power sources.

Ref: University of Texas at Austin (2007, October 19). Dealing With Wind
Variability On The Wind Farm. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 30,

Renewable Energy continued to grow strongly according to REN21 Report

2011-07-31T23:38:00.003+05:30

REN21 report released in July 2011 captures that reality and provides a unique overview of renewable energy worldwide as of early 2011. The report covers both current status and key trends; by design, it does not provide analysis or forecast the future.

Global energy consumption rebounded in 2010 after an overall downturn in 2009. Renewable energy, which experienced no downturn in 2009, continued to grow strongly in all end-use sectors - power, heat and transport - and supplied an estimated 16% of global final energy consumption. Renewable energy accounted for approximately half of the estimated 194 gigawatts (GW) of new electric capacity added globally during the year. Renewables delivered close to 20% of global electricity supply in 2010, and by early 2011 they comprised one-quarter of global power capacity from all sources.

In several countries, renewables represent a rapidly growing share of total energy supply, including heat and transport. For example:

• In the United States, renewable energy accounted for about 10.9% of domestic primary energy production (compared with nuclear's 11.3%), an increase of 5.6% relative to 2009.

• China added an estimated 29 GW of grid-connected renewable capacity, for a total of 263 GW, an increase of 12% compared with 2009. Renewables accounted for about 26% of China's total installed electric capacity, 18% of generation, and more than 9% of final energy consumption in 2010.

• Germany met 11% of its total final energy consumption with renewable sources, which accounted for 16.8% of electricity consumption, 9.8% of heat production (mostly from biomass), and 5.8% of transport fuel consumption. Wind power accounted for nearly 36% of renewable generation, followed by biomass, hydropower, and solar photovoltaics (PV).

• Several countries met higher shares of their electricity demand with wind power in 2010, including Denmark (22%), Portugal (21%), Spain (15.4%), and Ireland (10.1%).

Trends reflect strong growth and investment across all market sectors. During the period from the end of 2005 through 2010, total global capacity of many renewable energy technologies - including solar PV, wind power, concentrating solar thermal power (CSP), solar water heating systems, and biofuels - grew at average rates ranging from around 15% to nearly 50% annually. Biomass and geothermal for power and heat also grew strongly. Wind power added the most new capacity, followed by hydropower and solar PV.

Across most technologies, 2010 saw further growth in equipment manufacturing, sales, and installation. Technology cost reductions in solar PV in particular meant high growth rates in manufacturing. Cost reductions in wind turbines and biofuel processing technologies also contributed to growth. At the same time, there was further industry consolidation, notably in the biomass and biofuels industries, as traditional energy companies moved more strongly into the renewable energy space, and as manufacturing firms continued to move into project development.

By early 2011, at least 119 countries had some type of policy target or renewable support policy at the national level, up from 55 countries in early 2005. There is also a large diversity of policies in place at state/provincial and local levels. Developing countries, which now represent more than half of all countries with policy targets and half of all countries with renewable support policies, are playing an increasingly important role in advancing renewable energy.

As policies spread to more and more countries, the geography of renewable energy use is also changing. For example, commercial wind power existed in just a handful of countries in the 1990s but now exists in at least 83 countries. Solar PV capacity was added in more than 100 countries during 2010. Outside of Europe and the United States, developed countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan are experiencing gains and broader technology diversification, while (collectively) developing countries have more than half of global renewable power capacity.

China now leads in several indicators of market growth: in 2010, it was the top installer of wind turbines and solar thermal systems and was the top hydropower producer. India is fifth worldwide in total existing wind power capacity and is rapidly expanding many forms of rural renewables such as biogas and solar PV. Brazil produces virtually all of the world's sugar-derived ethanol and has been adding new hydropower, biomass, and wind power plants, as well as solar heating systems.

At least 20 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa have active renewable energy markets. Manufacturing leadership continues to shift from Europe to Asia as countries like China, India, and South Korea increase their commitments to renewable energy. The increasing geographic diversity in markets and manufacturing is boosting confidence that renew-ables are less vulnerable to policy or market dislocations in any specific country.

One of the forces propelling renewable energy policies and development is the potential to create new industries and generate new jobs. Jobs from renewables number in the hundreds of thousands in several countries. Globally, there are more than 3.5 million direct jobs in renewable energy industries, about half of them in the biofuels industry, with additional indirect jobs well beyond this figure.

Also driving renewables development are state-owned multilateral and bilateral development banks, which have been pillars of investment in renewable energy during recent, troubled years for the world economy. More public money went to the renewable energy sector through development banks than through government stimulus packages during 2010.

Total investment in renewable energy reached $211 billion in 2010, up from $160 billion in 2009, continuing the steady annual increase seen since tracking first began in 2004. Including the unreported $15 billion (estimated) invested in solar hot water collectors, total investment exceeded $226 billion. An additional $40-45 billion was invested in large hydropower.

Asset finance of new utility-scale projects (wind farms, solar parks, and biofuel and solar thermal plants) accounted for almost 60% of the total and was the largest investment asset class. Investment in small-scale distributed generation projects (mainly solar PV) amounted to $60 billion and accounted for more than 25% of total investment in renewable energy. For the first time, investment in renewable energy companies and utility-scale generation and biofuel projects in developing countries surpassed that in developed economies. China attracted more than a third of global investment during 2010, making it the leader for the second year in a row.

WIND POWER.

The market maintained its 2009 level, with 38 GW added for a total of about 198 GW. For the first time, the majority of new wind power capacity was added in developing countries and emerging markets, driven primarily by China, which accounted for half the global market. Trends include continued offshore development, the growing popularity of community-based projects and distributed, small-scale grid-connected turbines, and the development of wind projects in a wider variety of geographical locations. Average turbine sizes continued to increase in 2010, with some manufacturers launching 5 MW and larger machines, and direct-drive turbine designs captured 18% of the global market.

SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS (PV)

The PV industry had an extraordinary year, with global production and markets more than doubling in 2010. An estimated 17 GW of capacity was added worldwide (compared with just under 7.3 GW in 2009), bringing the global total to about 40 GW - more than seven times the capacity in place five years earlier. The EU dominated the global PV market, led by Italy and particularly Germany, which installed more PV in 2010 than the entire world did the previous year. The trend toward utility-scale PV plants continued, with the number of such systems exceeding 5,000 and accounting for almost 25% of total global PV capacity. Cell manufacturing continued its shift to Asia, with 10 of the top 15 manufacturers located in the region. Industry responded to price declines and rapidly changing market conditions by consolidating, scaling up, and moving into project development.

CONCENTRATING SOLAR THERMAL POWER (CSP)

After years of inactivity, the CSP market has come back to life with nearly 740 MW added between 2007 and the end of 2010. More than half of this capacity was installed during 2010. Parabolic trough plants continued to dominate the market. Dramatic reductions in PV costs are challenging the growing market for CSP, at least in the United States, where several planned projects were redesigned to use utility-scale PV technologies. At the same time, project development is moving beyond the U.S. southwest and Spain to other regions and countries, particularly the MENA region.

SOLAR HOT WATER/HEATING

Solar heating capacity increased by an estimated 25 GWth in 2010 to reach approximately 185 GWth, excluding unglazed swimming pool heating. China continues to dominate the world market for solar hot water collectors. Europe's market shrank during 2010 due to the economic recession, despite the emergence of some new players, but it continued to rank a distant second. While virtually all installations in China are for hot water only, there is a trend in Europe toward larger combined systems that provide both water and space heating. A number of solar industrial process heat installations came online during 2009 and 2010 in China, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere.

BIOMASS POWER AND HEAT

Biomass supplies an increasing share of electricity and heat and continues to provide the majority of heating produced with renewable sources. An estimated 62 GW of biomass power capacity was in operation by the end of 2010. Biomass heat markets are expanding steadily, particularly in Europe but also in the United States, China, India, and elsewhere. Trends include increasing consumption of solid biomass pellets (for heat and power) and use of biomass in combined heat and power systems. China leads the world in the number of household biogas plants, and gasifiers are used increasingly for heat applications in small and large enterprises in India and elsewhere. Biomethane (purified biogas) is increasingly injected into pipelines (particularly in Europe) to replace natural gas in power and CHP plants.

A Dynamic Policy Landscape

Renewable energy support policies continued to be a driving force behind the increasing shares of renewable energy, despite some setbacks due to the lack of long-term policy certainty and stability around the world in 2010.

National targets now exist in at least 98 countries. These targets represent commitments to shares of electricity production (typically 10-30%), total primary or final energy, heat supply, installed capacities of specific technologies, and shares of biofuels in road transport fuels. Many targets also exist at the state, provincial, and local levels. Although some targets were not met or were scaled back, many countries achieved or exceeded their targets set for 2010; two countries - Finland and Sweden - passed their targets for 2020.

Rural Renewable Energy

In even the most remote areas, renewable energy is increasing access to basic energy services - including lighting and communications, cooking, heating and cooling, and water pumping - and generating economic growth. PV household systems, wind turbines, micro-hydro powered or hybrid mini-grids, biomass-based systems or solar pumps, and other renewable technologies are being employed in homes, schools, hospitals, agriculture, and small industry in rural and off-grid areas of the developing world.

The number of rural households served by renewable energy is difficult to estimate as the sector becomes driven increasingly by individual project promoters or private companies, but it runs into the hundreds of millions. Small solar PV systems provide power to a few million households, and micro-hydro configured into village- or county-scale mini-grids serves many more. Over 44 million households use biogas made in household-scale digesters for lighting and/or cooking, and more than 166 million households now rely on a new generation of more-efficient biomass cookstoves.

Off-grid renewable solutions are increasingly acknowledged to be the cheapest and most sustainable options for rural areas in much of the developing world. This will have an impact on market development in the long term, especially if the barriers to accessing information and financing products are addressed.

This report predicts a good future for various Renewable Energy Technologies and through which we can hope for a more greener world as well.

Ref: REN21 Report

Tool to Predict Solar Variability Effects for a better Grid Integration

2011-06-25T12:31:00.000+05:30

The variability in the output of photovoltaic power systems has long been a source of great concern for utility operators worldwide. This is a real concern in tropical countries like India where the monsoon clouds will control the situation for 3 to 4 months. Once we can predict and model it, it will be a fine tool for the Utility Grid operators to control and switch other generators when needed to stabilise the Grid.

Currently, with solar plants accounting for a very small fraction of generation on most electrical grids these changes do not cause any problems for grid operators. However, if solar penetration levels increase in the future, as they likely will, such variability will pose problems for grid operators. A fast change in generation from cloud transients will need to be balanced by other sources of generation to balance load.

The power output fluctuations from solar panels during the cloud cover have to be predicted for addressing this issue. We hope that the latest innovation from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Jacobs School, San Diego can solve the problem to a greater extent.UC San Diego Professor Jan Kleissl and Matthew Lave, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Jacobs School, have found the answer to these questions. They also have developed a software program that allows power grid managers to easily predict fluctuations in the solar grid caused by changes in the cloud cover. The program uses a solar variability law Lave discovered.

But Kleissl and Lave found that variability for large photovoltaic systems is much smaller than previously thought. It also can be modeled accurately, and easily, based on measurements from just a single weather station.

The finding comes at a time when the Obama administration is pushing for the creation of a smart power grid throughout the nation. The improved grid would allow for better use of renewable power sources, including wind and solar.

Also, more utilities have been increasing the amount of renewable energy sources they use to power homes and businesses. For example, Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy have come up with National Solar Energy Mission to add 20000 MW by 2020. Inspired by this announcement many MNCs and Indian companies have come up with proposal for solar farms.
Kleissl and Lave's finding could have a dramatic impact on the amount of solar power allowed to feed into the grid. Right now, because of concerns over variability in power output, the amount of solar power flowing in the grid at residential peak demand times in California, say -- is limited to 15 percent before utilities are required to perform additional studies. As operators are able to better predict a photovoltaic system's variability, they will be able to increase this limit.

Incidentally, Kleissl and Lave's research shows that the amount of solar variability can also be reduced by installing smaller solar panel arrays in multiple locations rather than building bigger arrays in just one spot, since a cloud covering one panel is less likely to cover the other panels, Lave said. "The distance between arrays is key," he said.

Kleissl presented the paper, titled 'Modeling Solar Variability Effects on Power Plants,' this week at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

His findings are based on analysis of one year's worth of data from the UC San Diego solar grid -- the most monitored grid in the nation, with 16 weather stations and 5,900 solar panels totaling 1.2 megawatts in output. Lave looked at variations in the amount of solar radiation the weather stations were receiving for intervals as short as a second. The amount of radiation correlates with the amount of power the panels produce.

Based on these observations, he found that when the distance between weather stations is divided by the time frame for the change in power output, a solar variability law ensues. "For any pair of stations at any time horizon, this variability law is applicable" says Lave. In other words, the law can be applied to any configuration of photovoltaic systems on an electric grid to quantify the system's variability for any given time frame.

But Lave didn't stop there. He developed an easy-to-use interface in MATLAB that allows grid planners and operators to simulate the variability of photovoltaic systems. Data can be input as a text file, but the interface also allows users to simply draw a polygon around each system on a satellite Google Map. Based on solar radiation measurements at a single sensor on a given day, the model calculates the variability in total output across all systems.

"It is as easy as painting by numbers," said Kleissl. "In Google Maps, photovoltaics show up as dark rectangles on rooftops. Draw some polygons around them, push the button, and out comes the total variability."

Kleissl said he anticipates this tool will be useful to figure out whether problems in voltage fluctuation may occur in power feeder systems with a large amount of photovoltaic arrays. At this point, the solar installations on almost all feeders are still far below the capacity that would cause any major issues. The tool developed by Lave and Kleissl could become key in solar installations in all parts of the world.

The model development was sponsored by DOE's High PV Penetration Program grant 10DE-EE002055. Further information is available at:

https://solarhighpen.energy.gov/project/university_of_california_san_diego and http://solar.ucsd.edu

New Questions arise after the Japanese Nuclear Crisis

2011-03-16T13:40:00.004+05:30

Academics and nuclear experts agree the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi reactors are grave, and the solutions being proposed are last-ditch efforts to stem what could well be remembered as one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

Conditions at a stricken nuclear power plant in Japan have deteriorated so much that there is a growing consensus the crisis is greater than the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and there are fears that it could get significantly worse.

All six reactors at the complex have problems; be it blown-out roofs, potentially cracked containment structures, exposed fuel rods or just the risk of explosion that has been great enough to force emergency measures. Of particular concern are a fire in a massive pool holding spent atomic fuel rods and a blast at the building housing the pool and reactor No.4. The pool is exposed to the elements, unlike the reactor core protected in steel and concrete.

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 was the biggest in U.S. history. Half of the reactor core in one unit melted due to the loss of coolant, though it resulted in no immediate injuries.

The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986 was the worst in the industry's history, as an explosion led to a cloud of radioactive material being spewed over big parts of Europe.

Several experts said that Japanese authorities were underplaying the severity of the incident, particular on a scale called INES used to rank nuclear incidents. The Japanese have so far rated the accident a four on a one-to-seven scale against Three Mile at a five and Chernobyl at a seven.

But that rating was issued on Saturday, and since then the situation has worsened dramatically.

In the past few hours alone, the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, said that a fire broke out at the building housing the No.4 reactor -- the same reactor that houses the troubled spent fuel pool.

Kyodo News reported, citing TEPCO, that the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were 70 percent damaged and the rods in the No. 2 reactor were 33 percent damage. Meanwhile, just after 10 a.m. local time Wednesday, Japanese TV reported white smoke coming from the plant.

Separately, Japan's nuclear safety agency said two workers are missing and disclosed that there is a crack in the roof of the same building after an earlier explosion.

Europe's Nuclear Plan under Pressure

Japan's nuclear crisis in the wake of a huge earthquake is likely to increase opposition to plans for a major nuclear expansion in Europe and focus attention on the vast potential costs of a nuclear disaster.

The crisis will reignite concern over nuclear safety as Japan fights to avert a meltdown at crippled nuclear reactors, describing the quake and tsunami, which may have killed more than 10,000 people, as its biggest crisis since World War Two.

The disaster is a setback to the nuclear industry, which is enjoying a renaissance as public fears over nuclear safety have faded along with memories of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States and Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Many countries plan new nuclear power plants, regarding nuclear as a clean alternative to expensive and dwindling oil and gas and saying new technology should allay safety fears.

But anti-nuclear campaigners around Europe have seized on the Japanese accident as evidence of the dangers of nuclear power and said governments should rethink plans for new plants.

"I think it will make a lot of governments, authorities and other planners think twice about planning power stations in seismic areas," said Jan Haverkamp, European Union policy campaigner for environmental group Greenpeace, which opposes new nuclear reactors and wants existing ones phased out.

French reactor maker Areva and nuclear power producers EDF and GDF Suez are important industry players. France's Alstom and Schneider Electric are also active in the sector, as are Switzerland's ABB and Germany's Siemens.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government last year extended the operating lives of Germany's nuclear reactors, said the government was consulting with nuclear experts and watching the situation in Japan closely.

The Japanese radiation leak comes at a difficult time for Merkel, whose conservatives face three state elections in March where nuclear safety fears could help her opponents.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of anti-nuclear protesters formed a 45-km (27 mile) human chain from Stuttgart to a nuclear power plant that will be kept running longer because of the new policy. The protest was planned before the Japanese earthquake.

Oil will be needed to support Japan after the recent earthquake disaster. Russia has promise energy industry support to Japan, the easiest of which to implement is fuel. Clean up is going to take lots of horsepower from fuel. The Japanese electrical grid will be without electricity from nuclear generators for quite sometime. Bloomberg reported that Tokyo Electric is still seeking government approvals for a full restart of the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant (five reactors at 1,067 MW and two at 1,315 MW for a total 7,965 MW), which was shutdown after being damaged by an earthquake in 2007. The company posted its first loss in 28 years after it was forced to buy fossil fuels at record prices to make up for the lost nuclear output.

The Effect on Energy Industry

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake not only wiped out people's belongings in northern Japan, but also destroyed supply chains from various industrials. The nuclear power industry was especially hit hard due to the chain reaction resulting meltdown of the metal containers in the reactors. Numerous organizations and governments around world protect against nuclear energy as a major source of energy on this planet because it is simply not safe in such scale a disaster.

Countries such as USA, China, Japan and Australia are most susceptible to big earthquakes. It is reported that Southern California is way overdue for a big hit, it is not a question of "if" but "when." California has two operating plants: Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, both are vulnerable to earthquakes. This causes serious concerns in the region. Naturally, last week's earthquake changed the mentality of how people should approach renewable energy in the future. We will not likely give up nuclear energy, but the problem is that no safety rule is strict enough to guarantee safe operations if a big earthquake strikes. As a result, nuclear power will likely play a smaller role in the future energy market, while solar and wind energy are much more secure, safer and easy to distribute.

The Effect on Solar Industry

The earthquake also has impact on the solar energy industry. Japan accounts for 1/4th of global solar production, including solar panels and polysilicon. Most of these products are sold in domestic markets, some polysilicon is shipped overseas. The earthquake caused shutdown of production from Sanyo, Panasonic, the Kyocera Corp. and Sharp. Some facilities are not severely damaged, but what impacts the industry is the infrastructure. It is believed that at least 2-3 months will be needed to repair the power grid. Without electricity, the solar industry will remain shutdown for foreseeable future. The supply chain is not there any more. It will even take longer to repair the roads and ports in the northern coast.

Japan may have two weeks of inventory for panels and wafers. M. Setek, a solar wafer supplier, has completely shut down its facilities due to the damage caused by the earthquake. It supplies wafers to Sunpower. Companies benefiting the most are the polysilicon producers such as LDK solar and ReneSola. Both will fill the gaps left by Japanese companies. Sunpower, Sharp and Kyocera will likely have to place orders from LDK and SOL to solve the supply problem, and they may have to pay high price for the wafers. We believe Suntech power, Jinko Solar, and Trina Solar will not be affected by the shortfall, as they have long term contracts in place. Yingli green is a vertical integration company, so it is barely impacted.

The sentiment is shifting towards to solar energy as governments from Japan, China, France, Italy and Germany are considering boosting the solar energy shares in their renewable energy portfolios. People of these countries are putting lots of pressure on politicians to shift their energy policies to favor solar energy. In the next 2-3 months, new policies from the countries of major solar markets are expected to be enacted. The German government has indicated that existing nuclear plantoperations will not be extended as most Germans are opposed to nuclear power. It is certain that leaders in Japan will rigorously set policies to promote solar power as opposed to nuclear power in their next congressional meeting.

Floating Solar Panels: Will it catch up?

2011-02-26T12:04:00.006+05:30

Availability of space is a major problem for Solar Photovoltaic installations. This is more true in the case of big PV Power Plants where space is a constraint. Generally 4 to 5 acres of land area is needed for a MW of PV installation. This means that the total land area needed for a 50 MW installation is 250 acres which is a huge area. This is a concern for PV generation in areas where the density of population is high and the land value is costly. In my country, I faced this problem when I was trying to design a 1 MW Slar PV Power Plant in Thiruvananthapuram City area. We have only some roof tops available which is not sufficient for 1 MW PV module laying. The idea of laying PV modules in dam catchment areas and lakes are not new for the last several years. The important thing is to lay these modules without affecting the living organisms in water and to maintain it scientifically. The following scientific innovation will be interesting for any PV technologist to try and adapt it to suit to their environment after making proper technological changes.

The company Solaris Synergy believes that their invention provides cheaper electricity and better use of the land area.

Solar panels located on water surfaces have the advantage that they easily can be moved according to the sun’s movements and also prevent the water to the solar cells get too hot. A third advantage is that the water temperature is more constant than air temperature. Large temperature differences, such as in a desert is wearing much on solar cells semiconducting components, but this can be avoided by putting solar cells in water. The placement in freshwater prevents solar evaporation and inhibit algae growth.

Solar cells on water will probably be best placed on industrial ponds, for example at a water treatment plant where solar cells could then provide power to operate the treatment plant.

Developed by a Franco-Israeli partnership, this innovative solar power technology introduces a new paradigm in energy production. Solar power plays a dominant role in the world-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gases, it is considered a clean energy and is an efficient source of electricity. Yet several obstacles have been undermining the expansion of this sector and many of its actors are looking for a new approach towards the markets.

Soon after the design phase was over, at the end of March 2010, the fabrication of a prototype began and the team is now aiming to launch the implementation phase in September 2011. The tests will take place at Cadarache, in the South East of France, the site having a privileged position on the French electric grid and being close to a local hydro-electric facility providing the water surface to be used for the installation of the system. It will operate on-site during a period of nine months, while assessing the system's performances and productivity through seasonal changes and various water levels. The research team members believe that by June 2012, they will have all the information required to allow the technology's entry on the market.

As even leading photovoltaic companies struggle to find land on which to install solar power plants, the project team identified the almost untouched potential of solar installations on water. The water basins, on which the plants could be built, are not natural reserves, tourists' resorts or open sea; rather they are industrial water basins already in use for other purposes. By that, it is assured that the new solar plants will not have a negative impact on natural landscapes. "It's a win-win situation," declares Dr. Kassel, "since there are many water reservoirs with energy, industrial or agricultural uses that are open for energy production use."

After solving the question of space, the team also took on the problem of cost. "It sounds magical to combine sun and water to produce electricity, but we also have to prove that it carries a financial logic for the long run," explains Dr. Kassel. The developers were able to reduce the costs linked to the implementation of the technology by two means. First they reduced the quantity of solar cells used thanks to a sun energy concentration system based on mirrors, while keeping steady the amount of power produced.

Secondly, the team used a creative cooling system using the water on which the solar panels are floating. Thanks to this efficient cooling method, the photovoltaic system can use silicon solar cells, which tend to experience problems linked to overheating and need to be cooled down in order to allow the system to work correctly, unlike standard type more expensive cells. The particular type of solar cell used also allows a higher efficiency than the standard ones, achieving both reliability and cost reduction.

Still for the purpose of making the technology efficient and ready to market, the system is designed in such way that on a solar platform it is possible to assemble as many identical modules as needed for the power rating desired. Each module produces a standard amount of 200 kiloWatt electricity, and more power can be achieved by simply adding more modules to the plant.

The team also worked on the environmental impact of the technology. It works in fact as a breathing surface through which oxygen can penetrate to the water. This feature ensures that sufficient oxygen will maintain the underwater life of plants and animals. Dr. Kassel adds: "One of the implementation phase's goals is to closely monitor the possible effects of this new technology on the environment with the help of specialists" and "a preliminary check shows no detrimental environmental impact on water quality, flora or fauna. Our choices of materials were always made with this concern in mind."

*The project results from a collaboration between Solaris Synergy from Israel and the EDF Group from France. EUREKA provided the supporting platform which allowed to enhance both companies' partnership. After receiving the "EUREKA label" the project, called AQUASUN, found also support from the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.

Floating solar power plants could be placed at hydroelectric plants, which already have infrastructure for electricity production.It is not realistic to place solar cells on the sea as waves will prevent the optimum angle to the sun. My State of Kerala, "The God's Own Country", is blessed with a lot of lakes and rivers. The catchment areas of our major dams can be utilised for PV module laying if we scientifically design the installations without affecting the fishes and other living organisms. This is one of the areas we need to stress upon for small scale generation of power utilising Photovoltaic technology.

From Copenhagen to Cancun

2010-12-24T16:12:00.004+05:30

The December 11 closure of the 16th Conference of the Parties--the COP16 global climate summit--in Cancun in Mexico was portrayed by most participants and mainstream journalists as a victory, a "step forward." U.S. State Department lead negotiator Todd Stern expressed his opinion; "Ideas that were first of all skeletal last year, and not approved, are now approved and elaborated."

Yes.....the Cancun agreements were 'approved' to great celebration from the international community.

The positive reaction is based on reaching an international consensus (though Bolivia dissented) and establishing instruments to manage the climate crisis. Cancun’s defenders argue that the last-hours agreements include acknowledgements that emissions cuts must keep world temperature increases below 2°C, with consideration to be given to lowering the target to 1.5°C.

Negotiators also endorsed greater transparency about emissions, a Green Climate Fund led by the World Bank, introduction of forest-related investments, transfers of technology for renewable energy, capacity building and a strategy for reaching legally binding protocols in future. According to UN climate official Christiana Figueres, formerly a leading carbon trader, "Cancun has done its job. Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause."

Bolivian opposition

Bolivia's President Evo Morales complained, "It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide who lack water and food, and suffer misery and hunger. People here in Cancún have no idea what it is like to be a victim of climate change."
For Bolivia's UN ambassador Pablo Solon, Cancun "does not represent a step forward, it is a step backwards," because the nonbinding commitments made to reduce emissions by around 15 percent by 2020 simply cannot stabilize temperature at the "level which is sustainable for human life and the life of the planet."

Even greater anger was expressed by civil society activists, including by Meena Raman of the Malaysia-based Third World Network: "The mitigation paradigm has changed from one which is legally binding--the Kyoto Protocol, with an aggregate target which is system-based, science-based--to one which is voluntary, a pledge-and-review system."

But look soberly at what was needed to reverse current warming and what was actually delivered. Negotiators in Cancun’s luxury Moon Palace hotel complex failed by any reasonable measure.

More protests

As El Salvadoran Friends of the Earth leader Ricardo Navarro lamented, "What is being discussed at the Moon does not reflect what happens on Earth”

Most specialists agree that even if the un-ambitious Copenhagen and Cancun promises are kept, the result will be a cataclysmic 4-5°C rise in world temperature over this century, and if they are not, 7°C is likely. Even with a rise of 2°C, scientists generally agree that small islands will sink, Andean and Himalayan glaciers will melt, coastal areas--such as much of Bangladesh and many port cities--will drown, and Africa will dry out, or in some places flood, so much that nine of 10 peasants will not survive.

The politicians and officials have been warned of this often enough by climate scientists, but are beholden to powerful business interests that have lined up to either promote climate denialism, or to generate national-versus-national negotiating blocs destined to fail in their race to gain most emission rights. As a result, in spite of a band-aid set of agreements, the distance between negotiators and the masses of people and the planet grew larger, not smaller, over the last two weeks.

An illusory deal

A report by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, in December 2010 noted that already 350,000 people die from natural disasters related to climate change and that this figure is likely to rise to one million people every year if we don't radically change course. Bolivia was not an obstacle to progress, it was rather the only nation daring enough to tell the truth. Rather than less Bolivias, we need more willing to stand up and say that the agreement was 'naked' and unacceptable. Perhaps if more nations – especially major emerging economies like India and Brazil - had said they would not accept an illusory deal, it could have shocked the world into moving beyond cautious approaches and acting radically for humanity and the planet.

By contrast, the Cancun agreement effectively kills off the Kyoto Protocol and replaces it with a pledge system of voluntary commitments. Not only does this lead to countries only offering what they plan to do anyway, ignoring what science demands; there is absolutely no possibility of legal penalties if a country fails to fulfil its commitments. It is an ineffective and highly dangerous way of tackling one of the biggest crises humanity has faced.

..And finally what Cancun text says

Document effectively kills of the only binding agreement, Kyoto Protocol, in favour of a completely inadequate bottom-up voluntary approach.

Increases loopholes and flexibilities that allow developed countries to avoid action, via an expansion of offsets and continued existence of ‘surplus allowances’ of carbon after 2012 by countries like Ukraine and Russia which effectively cancel out any other reductions.

Finance Commitments weakened: commitment to “provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries have been diluted to talking more vaguely about “mobilising [resources] jointly”, with expectation that this will mainly be provided by carbon markets.

No discussion of Intellectual Property rights, repeatedly raised by many countries, as current rules obstruct transfer of key climate-related technologies to developing countries.

Constant assumption in favour of market mechanisms to resolve climate change even though this perspective is not shared by a number of countries, particularly in Latin America.

Green light given for the controversial REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programme which often ends up perversely rewarding those responsible for deforestation, while dispossessing indigenous and forest dwellers of their land.

Systematic exclusion of proposals that came from the historic World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change including proposals for a Climate Justice Tribunal, full recognition of indigenous rights, and rights for nature.

Bolivia's indefatigable negotiator, Pablo Solon, put it most cogently in the concluding plenary, when he said that the only way to assess whether the agreement had any 'clothes' was to see if it included firm commitments to reduce emissions and whether it was enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Power Generating Mushrooms of South India

2010-12-07T22:32:00.008+05:30

“It is just like a plantation of mushrooms generating energy everywhere!! Amazing to see the ability of local entrepreneurs to repair and maintain the wind turbines of different capacities in Tamilnadu State of India”

Those were the words from Mr. Matthew Matimbwi, the Renewable Energy Engineer from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He was making his programme evaluation remarks during our third phase of the International Training on Wind Power Development and Use in India conducted by the LIFE Academy, Sweden. Earlier we were brought to the Muppandal Wind Farm site in Kanyakumari District of Tamilnadu State for study visits; thanks to Bo Gillgren and Tommy Mansson from LIFE Academy for giving us the opportunity to explore as a team of professionals from different parts of the world.

Mathew’s view was very much right; It is just like a huge plantation of Wind Turbine Mushrooms generating tremendous amount of energy. “Muppandal Wind Farm” in Kanyakumari District of Tamilnadu is the largest Wind Farms in Asia. According to Dr. Joshua Earnest, the installation of Muppandal is next only to the cluster of Wind Turbines installed at the Altamont pass in California. Dr. Joshua, who was our chief faculty during the training, is currently the Professor & Head of the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research, Bhopal, India.

Muppandal Wind Country

The book titled “Wind Power Plants and Project Development”, jointly authored by Dr. Joshua Earnest and Tore Wizelinius, describes Muppandal Wind Farm as the “Muppandal Wind Country”. Excerpts from the book:

“Muppandal is the key places which go down into the annals of wind power history not only India, but also the world. This is one of the windiest parts of India. The steady flow of wind to these Wind Power Plants is made possible because the Muppandal Wind Farm is situated on a mountain pass in Western Ghats, through which wind is canalised throughout the year. The average wind velocity in this area is about 12 m/s, which is extremely good for wind power generation. The first Wind Farm with 10 Wind Turbine of 55 kW each was installed at Mullakkadu in 1986 and the first private sector Wind Farm was set up in 1990 with two wind turbines of 250 kW each at Muppandal. And more and more wind power have been installed during the years. This is next only to the cluster of Wind Power Plants installed at California in the U.S.A. Today Muppandal is a permanent large exhibition ground spanning several square kilometres, attracting not only the wind farm developers, but also tourists, researchers and everyone interested in seeing different types of wind turbines at a single location"

Present status of Wind Generation in Tamilnadu

According to the Tamil Nadu Energy Development Agency (TEDA), the nodal agency for the promoting renewable energy sector, the State has 5,055 MW of wind generation capacity now with private investors accounting for about 5,038 MW. About 17 MW is with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and TEDA.

During the current year, Government estimates indicate that over 645 MW of wind turbines will be added.

In addition, the State is a hub of wind turbine manufacturers with most of the leading global players setting up manufacturing facilities.

They are Suzlon, Vestas, Gamesa, Enercon, RRB Energy, Shriram Leitner, Regen Power … and a bunch of local players many of them based in the engineering hub of Coimbatore which churn out small aero generators of kilowatt capacity.

Together there is a wind turbine manufacturing capability covering a range from 25 KW to 2 MW, say the officials. At current levels of capacity, the industry has actually fully exploited the levels of wind power capacity that had been initially estimated. The potential assessed was then 5,374 MW, they say. But over the years developments in technology, larger size and more efficient turbines have contributed to increasing the potential in this sector which is now grown multi-fold.

Apart from the Government support through the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the supportive approach of the State Government and the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board in offering an attractive tariff of Rs 3.39 a unit, and facilities for banking and wheeling and scaling up evacuation infrastructure have helped catalyse investments in this sector. The TNEB is in the process of setting up five 400 kv substations and three 230 KV substations that would address the bottlenecks in evacuation of wind power, says officials.

Background of the Wind Power Development in Tamilnadu

Wind has considerable potential as a global clean energy source being both widely available, though diffuse, and producing no pollution during power generation, Tamil Nadu is endowed with three lengthy mountain ranges on the Western side with potential of 1650 MW in palghat pass in Coimbatore District, 1300 MW in Shengottai pass in Tirunelveli District and 2100 MW in Arelvaymozhi pass in Kanniyakumari District and 450 MW in other areas totalling 5500 MW. We must see that the total achievement in India is 12009 MW.

There are 41 Wind potential sites in 8 Districts in the State, declared by MNRE, as suitable for Wind Power projects based on the Wind assessment studies carried out by TEDA with the funding assistance of MNRE and the State Government. Wind farms have so far been set up in 26 sites of the above, almost entirely by the private sector, except for 19 MW of Demonstration Wind farms in 8 locations set up during 1986 to 1993, jointly by TEDA and TNEB, but now run and maintained by TNEB.

A package of incentives which includes fiscal concessions, custom duty, excise duty exemption and 10 year tax holiday are available for Wind Power projects from Govt. of India. Intra State open access regulations have been notified and preferential tariff orders issued for Wind Power Projects in Tamil Nadu by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC). As per the revised tariff orders issued in May 2006, the rate is Rs.2.75 per unit for the projects for which agreements had already been signed and Rs.2.90 per unit where the agreements are to be signed. The wheeling and banking charges remain unchanged at 5% each.

This amazing success story is a very good case study for all entreprenuers in the world who would like to invest in wind power. It is the result of the hard work of thousand of engineers, technicians, policy makers, project managers and above all the political will of the Government and its people.

The legacy of Herman Scheer

2010-10-20T12:21:00.004+05:30

The words of Mahatma Gandhi - "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"- are a fitting introduction to Herman Scheer's latest book named "Der Energethische Imperativ" (subtitled 100% Now: How the Complete Switch to Renewable Energies Can Be Realised) It sums up his passionate conviction that it was technically and economically feasible for renewable energy to fully replace fossil and nuclear energy within just a few years, if the political will existed. He saw political intransigence as the biggest barrier to achieving this.

Herman Scheer was a true architect of the renewable-energy age, he lived as he preached, powering his home with a windmill.

The sad demise of Herman Scheer last week is a great loss to the people who are passionate about renewable and solar energy.

He never withered under the criticism that his ideas were utopian, and for the past decade was able to enjoy the fact that his views were being taken seriously. Nicknamed the "solar king", the "sun god" and the "solar pope", or - for those who were not complimentary about his environmental goals - the "Stalin of renewables", in 2000 Scheer succeeded in introducing the feed-in tariff, otherwise known as Scheer's law, by which individuals and businesses that generate power through renewable energies are able to sell it back to the grid at above-market prices, thus encouraging the spread of wind, solar and hydro power. The system has been adopted around the world and has contributed to the respect now given to renewable energy, not least because it has encouraged individual participation. A man of considerable energy himself, and also of great impatience, Scheer founded the International Renewable Energy Agency and was president of Eurosolar, the European Association for Renewable Energy.Scheer was never afraid of voicing his views. He often clashed with fellow party members, particularly the erstwhile SPD party leader and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder, over his decision in the late 90s to back Nato's intervention in Kosovo, which he called a "war crime", to which Schroder responded that he no longer belonged in his party. But his position in the Baden-Wurttemberg SPD was so solid that his future there was never called into question.

Scheer was known internationally for his pro-environmental politics. He was a supporter of renewable energy and wrote many books and articles outlying his ideas. Two in particular, "A Solar Manifesto" and "Solar Economy," are considered leading publications on renewable energy.

Supporting renewable energy earned Scheer many international awards over the years, including the alternative Nobel prize, the Right Livelihood Award, in 1999. Herman Scheer will be remembered for ever due to his contributions to the renewable energy world.

Renewables delivering 18% of the Global Electricity Supply in 2009; according to Renewables 2010 Global Status Report

2010-10-05T19:12:00.009+05:30

By 2010, renewable energy had reached a clear tipping point in the context of global energy supply, concludes the 'Renewables 2010 Global Status Report'. With renewables comprising fully one quarter of global power capacity from all sources and delivering 18% of global electricity supply in 2009, the latest release of the definitive assessment of the state of the global renewable energy industry from the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) details the current status and key trends of global markets, investment, industry and policies related to renewable energy.

Investment in new renewable power capacity continued to increase during 2009, despite challenges posed by the global financial crisis, lower oil prices, and slow progress with climate change policy. For the second year in a row, more money was invested in new renewable power capacity than in new fossil fuel capacity. The renewable generating capacity installed over the past two years accounts for nearly 50% of total generating capacity added to the world's grids over this period.

Furthermore, the rapid adoption beyond the industrialised world means that today more than half of the existing renewable power capacity is in developing countries.

These trends reflect strong growth and investment across all market sectors including power generation, heating and cooling, and transport fuels. Grid-connected solar PV has grown by an average of 60% every year for the past decade, increasing 100-fold since 2000. During the period from year-end 2004 through 2009, consistently high growth year-after-year marked virtually every other renewable technology as well. During those five years, annual growth rates averaged 27% for wind power capacity, 19% for solar water heating, and 20% for ethanol production. Indeed, as other economic sectors declined around the world, existing renewable capacity continued to grow during 2009 at rates close to, or exceeding, those in previous years. Market growth for some technologies - including wind and concentrating solar power, and solar water heating - exceeded their five-year averages in 2009. Annual production of ethanol and biodiesel increased 10% and 9%, respectively, despite layoffs and ethanol plant closures in the United States and Brazil. Biomass and geothermal for power and heat also grew strongly last year.

Much more active policy development during the past several years culminated in a significant policy milestone in early 2010 with more than 100 countries having some type of policy target and/or promotion policy related to renewable energy in place. Most countries have adopted more than one policy and there is a significant diversity of policy mechanisms in use at national, state/provincial and local levels to advance renewable energy. In addition, many of the new targets enacted in the past three years call for shares of energy or electricity from renewables in the 15%-25% range by 2020.

Renewable Energy Extends Its Reach

Recent trends also reflect the increasing significance of developing countries in advancing renewable energy. Collectively, developing countries now account for almost half of the countries with some sort of policy to promote renewable power generation, and they have more than half of global renewable power capacity. Today China leads the world in several indicators of market growth. India ranks fifth worldwide in total existing wind power capacity and is rapidly expanding many forms of rural renewables such as biogas and solar PV, while Brazil produces virtually all of the world's sugar-derived ethanol and has been adding new biomass and wind power plants. Renewables markets are growing at rapid rates in several other developing countries such as Argentina, Costa Rica, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay, to name a few.

The geography of renewable energy is changing in ways that suggest a new era of geographic diversity. For example, wind power existed in just a handful of countries in the 1990s but now operates in over 82 countries. Outside of Europe and the US, other developed countries like Australia, Canada and Japan are seeing recent gains and broader technology diversification. The developing world is experiencing a similar trend and, for example, today at least 20 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa have active renewable energy markets. This geographic diversity is boosting confidence that renewables are less vulnerable to market dislocations in any specific country.

Meanwhile, leadership in manufacturing is shifting from Europe to Asia as countries like China, India and South Korea continue to increase their commitments to renewable energy. In 2009, firms in China produced 40% of the world's solar PV cell supply, 30% of the world's wind turbines (up from 10% in 2007), and 77% of the world's solar hot water collectors.

Renewables Investment Remains Robust

Greatly increased investment from both public-sector and development banks is also driving renewables development. Excluding large hydro, total investment in renewable energy capacity was about US$150 billion in 2009, up from the revised $130 billion recorded in 2008. Investment in new renewable power capacity in both 2008 and 2009 represented over half of total global investment in new power generation. However, investment in utility-scale renewable energy additions dropped 6% in 2009 from the 2008 level, despite 'green stimulus' efforts by many of the world's major economies and increased investments from development banks in Europe, Asia and South America.

All told, again excluding large hydro, the world invested $101 billion in new utility-scale renewable energy development in 2009, compared with $108 billion in 2008. In 2009 there was also investment of some $50 billion worldwide in small-scale projects such as rooftop solar PV and solar hot water. An additional $40-$45 billion was invested in large hydropower.

Renewable energy companies invested billions of dollars in plant and equipment to manufacture solar modules, wind turbines and other generating devices during 2009. Venture capital and private equity investment in clean energy companies totalled $4.5 billion, down from $9.5 billion in 2008, while public market investment in quoted clean energy firms reached $12.8 billion, up from $11.8 billion. Government and corporate research, development, and deployment spending on clean energy technology in 2009 is estimated at $24.6 billion, up around 2% from 2008, the bulk (68%) of which went to energy-efficiency technologies.

Germany and China were the investment leaders in 2009, each spending roughly $25-$30 billion on new renewables capacity, including small hydro. They were followed by the US, investing over $15 billion, and Italy and Spain with about $4-$5 billion each.

The wind energy sector continued to be the hands-down leader, receiving 62% of the global total invested - $62.7 billion in 2009, up from $55.5 billion the year before. Most of the growth was due to China's rapid capacity expansion, increased investment activity in the wind sector in Latin America, and a handful of large utility-backed offshore wind deals in the UK.

These gains were offset by a $5.6 billion drop in solar power asset investment, to $17.1 billion in 2009, and a plunge in biofuels spending, down to $5.6 billion from $15.4 billion in 2008. Lower investment in PV in 2009 was due to several factors. One was the behaviour of prices along the value chain, with PV module prices falling by some 50% over the year, bringing the dollar value of financial investment down with them. Other factors included the Spanish government's cap on PV project development at the end of the boom associated with the pre-September 2008 tariff, and the shortage of debt finance for utility-scale projects in Europe and the US, which also affected wind farms. Concerns about scheduled reductions in feed-in tariff support for PV in some countries actually spurred on developers rather than holding them back. Indeed, Germany witnessed a spectacular end-of-2009 spurt in small-scale PV project construction.

In 2007, biofuels commanded 22% of global asset finance, with investment totalling $19.6 billion. However, the sector slipped to $15.4 billion in spending in 2008 and just $5.6 billion in 2009, representing only 5% of global project investment. An oversupply in US ethanol continued to smother investment in the biofuels sector in 2009. Things may soon turn around as both Brazil and the United States continue to follow ambitious biofuels targets. Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras has moved into the ethanol sector, and US plants bought under bankruptcy auctions in 2008 and 2009 have begun slowly to resume operation.

The decline in asset investment in biofuels relegated the sector to fourth place among the renewable energy sectors in 2009. Stepping up to third place, after wind and solar, was biomass (including waste-to-energy), with a rise in investment to $10.4 billion, from $9 billion in 2008.

In Europe, Brazil and elsewhere, the brightest feature for project investors during 2009 was the expanded role of public sector banks. The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Germany's KfW Banking Group, in particular, significantly raised their lending to renewable energy. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) played an active role in project finance, albeit not on the scale of the EIB and KfW, as did the Brazilian National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES) for Brazilian projects (though its lending declined relative to 2008 levels).

This strong contribution by the public sector was all the more needed, because many commercial banks - from Europe to the United States and elsewhere - found it impossible to sustain the 2008 level of lending to renewable energy projects. Overall, development assistance for renewables in developing countries surged in 2009, up to $5 billion from $2 billion in 2008. For example, the World Bank Group, including the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), saw the largest increase to date in finance from previous years. Finance rose fivefold in 2009 as $1.38 billion were committed to new renewables (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro below 10 MW) and another $177 million to large hydropower.

Expanding the Reach of Policies and Targets

Growth in renewables is inevitably supported through government policy. Renewable energy policies existed in a few countries in the 1980s and early 1990s, but policy support began to emerge in many more countries, states, provinces, and cities during the period 1998-2005, and even more so during 2005-2010.

Many countries have adopted national targets for shares of electricity production. Targets are typically for 5%-30% of electricity from renewable sources, but they range from 2%-90%. Many historical targets have aimed for the 2010-2012 timeframe, but targets aiming for 2020 and beyond have multiplied in recent years.

Developing nations now make up more than half of the countries worldwide with renewable energy targets. The 'Renewables 2007 Global Status Report' counted 22 developing countries with targets, a figure that had expanded to 45 by early 2010. Developing countries' targets are also becoming increasingly ambitious. For example, China aims for 15% of final energy consumption from renewables by 2020, even as total energy demand continues to grow at nearly double-digit annual rates.

Several countries have adopted targets at state/provincial and regional levels - and at other levels as well - with many mandated through renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and other policies.

In 2008, all 27 EU countries confirmed national targets for 2020, following a 2007 EU-wide target of 20% of final energy by 2020. It appears that many countries won't meet their 2010 targets by the end of the year, although this won't be known immediately due to data lags. Nonetheless, some EU countries were close to or had already achieved various types of national 2010 targets early in the year, including France, Germany, Latvia, Spain and Sweden.

City and local governments around the world are also enacting renewable energy promotion policies. Hundreds of cities and local governments have established future targets for renewables; urban planning that incorporates renewables into city development; building codes that mandate or promote renewables; tax credits and exemptions; purchases of renewable power or fuels for public buildings and transit; innovative electric utility policies; subsidies, grants, or loans; and many information and promotion activities.

Supporting Renewable Electricity Generation

At least 83 countries - 41 developed/transition countries and 42 developing countries - have some type of policy to promote renewable power generation. The 10 most common policy types are feed-in tariffs (FiTs), renewable portfolio standards, capital subsidies or grants, investment tax credits, sales tax or VAT exemptions, green certificate trading, direct energy production payments or tax credits, net metering, direct public investment or financing, and public competitive bidding.

The most common policy currently in use is the feed-in tariff, which has been enacted in many new countries and regions in recent years. By early 2010, at least 50 countries and 25 states/provinces had adopted FiTs over the years, more than half of which have been enacted since 2005.

Strong momentum for feed-in tariffs (FiTs) continues around the world as countries enact new policies or revise existing ones. For example, France adopted a tariff for building-integrated PV that was among the highest in the world (€0.42-€0.58/kWh). Other countries that adopted or updated FiTs included the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine and the UK. In some countries, tariffs were reduced in response to technology cost reductions, market slowdowns and concerns about foreign manufacturer market share; indeed, reductions were more prevalent in 2009 and early 2010 than in previous years.

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) - also called renewable obligations or quota policies - exist at the state/province level in the US, Canada and India, and at the national level in 10 countries: Australia, Chile, China, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the UK. Globally, 56 states provinces, or countries had RPS policies in place by early 2010. Most RPS policies require renewable power shares in the range of 5%-20%, typically by 2010 or 2012, although more recent policies are extending targets to 2015, 2020 and 2025. Most RPS targets translate into large expected future investments in renewable generation, although the specific means (and effectiveness) of achieving quotas can vary greatly across countries or states.

Investment tax credits, import duty reductions and/or other tax incentives are also common means for providing financial support at the national level in many countries, and at the state level in the United States, Canada and Australia. Many tax credits apply to a broad range of renewable energy technologies, such as Indonesia's new 5% tax credit adopted in early 2010, and a new 2009 policy in the Philippines for seven-year income tax exemptions and zero-VAT rates for renewable energy projects.

Energy production payments or credits, sometimes called 'premiums', also exist in a handful of countries while capital subsidies and tax credits have been particularly instrumental in supporting solar PV markets. Net metering (also called net billing) is an important policy for rooftop solar PV and laws now exist in at least 10 countries - including a growing number of developing countries. A few jurisdictions are also begining to mandate solar PV in selected types of new construction through building codes.

Basis for Optimism

Almost all renewable energy industries experienced manufacturing growth in 2009. It must be conceded, however, that many capital expansion plans were scaled back or postponed.

The REN21 Renewables 2010 Global Status Report reveals that for the second year in a row, in both the United States and Europe, more renewable power capacity was added than conventional power capacity from fossil fuels or nuclear. China added a staggering 37 GW of renewable power generation capacity in 2009, more than any other country in the world, to reach 226 GW installed. Globally, nearly 80 GW of renewable power capacity was added, including 31 GW of hydro and 48 GW of non-hydro capacity.

Indeed, wind power additions reached a record high of 38 GW - China was the top market, with 13.8 GW added. Solar PV additions reached a record high of 7 GW - Germany was the top market, with 3.8 GW added. And many countries saw record biomass use - notable was Sweden, where biomass accounted for a larger share of energy supply than oil for the first time. And biofuels production contributed the energy equivalent of 5% of world gasoline in 2009.

Even the most cynical observer must acknowledge this is a success story by any means, let alone under the current economic climate. Renewable energy is now breaking into the mainstream of energy markets thanks to hundreds of new government policies, accelerating private and public investment, and numerous technology advances achieved since the first Renewables Global Status report was released in 2005.

Despite the continuing advances highlighted in this year's report, the world has tapped only a fraction of the vast renewable energy resources available to us. Further strengthening of policy support can help drive the massive scale up in renewables needed for the sector to play a major role in building a stable, secure and enduring low-carbon global economy.

Ref: REN Renewables 2010 Global Status Report

PV Manufacturers globally produced an impressive 51% increase in 2009 from the year before.

2010-09-25T23:02:00.006+05:30

Solar photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturers produced a record 10,700 megawatts of PV cells globally in 2009—an impressive 51-percent increase from the year before. While growth in 2009 slowed from the remarkable 89-percent expansion in 2008, it continued the rapid rise of an industry that first reached 1,000 megawatts of production in 2004. By the end of 2009, nearly 23,000 megawatts of PV had been installed worldwide, enough to power 4.6 million U.S. homes. Solar PV, the world’s fastest-growing power technology, now generates electricity in more than 100 countries.
Made of semiconductor materials, PV cells convert solar radiation directly into electricity. Rectangular panels consisting of numerous PV cells can be linked into arrays of various sizes and power output capabilities—from rooftop systems of one to several kilowatts to ground-mounted arrays of hundreds or even thousands of megawatts. (One megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts.)

There are two broad categories of PV: crystalline silicon and thin-film. Crystalline silicon cells account for more than 80 percent of the annual PV market. But thin-film PV, a relatively new technology that is less efficient but also less expensive to make and potentially adaptable to more applications, is gaining ground. In fact, First Solar, a thin-film company headquartered in Arizona but with most of its production capacity in Malaysia, was the top PV manufacturing firm in 2009, contributing roughly 10 percent of world PV production.

China produced 3,800 megawatts of PV in 2009, leading all countries for the second straight year. Together China and third place Taiwan accounted for 49 percent of all PV manufacturing, a share that should keep climbing as companies there grow larger and more quickly than competitors based in countries where operating costs are higher. Rounding out the top five producers in 2009 were Japan in second place, Germany in fourth, and the United States in fifth.These traditional industry leaders have lost significant market share with the recent ascent of China and Taiwan. Indeed, Japan, which dominated the global market in 2004, controls just 14 percent today.

While China now manufactures more than a third of the world’s PV cells, most Chinese consumers cannot yet afford the technology. Ninety-five percent of its production is exported, much of it bound for Germany, the world leader in using PV. Germany installed a record 3,800 megawatts of PV in 2009, more than half the 7,200 megawatts added worldwide. This brought Germany’s overall PV generating capacity to 9,800 megawatts, nearly three times as much as the next closest country, Spain. Already in the first half of 2010, Germany added another 3,800 megawatts.

Italy was first runner-up in newly installed PV in 2009 with 730 megawatts, more than doubling its total installed capacity. Japan and the United States, third and fourth in both new and overall PV generating capacity, each installed close to 500 megawatts in 2009.

World installed PV capacity has grown 16-fold over the past decade in large part due to government incentives encouraging the use of solar power. Although PV production and installation costs have fallen substantially over time, government support will be necessary until solar reaches grid parity (price competitiveness) with heavily subsidized fossil fuels. Incorporating fossil fuels’ largely externalized costs, such as climate change and pollution-related illnesses, into the price of fossil-generated electricity would further accelerate PV’s march to grid parity.

The most important solar incentive to date is the feed-in tariff, which guarantees generators of renewable electricity—including homeowners, private firms, and utilities—a long-term purchase price for each kilowatt-hour they produce. This powerful incentive to invest in renewables has now been adopted by some 50 countries, including Ecuador, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Pakistan, Thailand, and most of the European Union. Deutsche Bank estimates that feed-in tariffs had driven 75 percent of world PV installations as of 2008.

Nowhere has the feed-in tariff been more effective than in Germany. In a country that on average receives about as much sunlight as cloudy Seattle, this premium payment for solar electricity has not only spurred Germany to preeminence in installed PV capacity, it has also helped grow a domestic solar industry with more than 10 billion euros ($13 billion) in annual sales.

With PV system prices plummeting, including a 30-percent drop in 2009 alone, the German government announced in mid-2010 that in order to control costs and bring support levels in line with market conditions, it would reduce tariff rates further than the annual cuts originally stipulated by law. While industry stakeholders warn of job losses and reduced demand, the government believes that other changes, including allowing larger systems to qualify for the premium, will ensure further growth. Electricity from PV could reach grid parity in Germany by 2013.

The United States, where total PV connected to the grid is doubling every two years, has no national feed-in policy. Instead, federal tax credits along with various state and local programs, including renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that require utilities to get a certain percentage of the electricity they sell from renewables, have been the main drivers of U.S. PV growth. With an RPS mandating 33-percent renewable electricity by 2020, California has 60 percent of the total 1,260 megawatts of grid-tied PV in the United States. Although this state still leads by a wide margin, others are growing more rapidly. Five states doubled their installed PV in 2009, including Florida, home of the new 25-megawatt DeSoto plant, currently the country’s largest PV park.

While interest in small-scale installations keeps growing in industrial and developing countries, the PV landscape is evolving to include utility-scale, multiple-megawatt solar parks of the DeSoto variety. In September 2010, a newly-expanded 80-megawatt park in Ontario, Canada, overtook a plant in central Spain to become the largest operational PV power plant in the world. Spain and Germany currently account for 8 of the top 10 plants, but that list could soon change dramatically as ambitious projects in other countries come online. China, with scarcely 300 megawatts of installed PV at the end of 2009, has a pipeline of large projects worth a total of 12,000 megawatts. The United States has 23 projects ranging from 100 to 5,000 megawatts under development in the arid Southwest. But these simply scratch the surface of that region's potential: harnessing a mere 2.5 percent of the annual solar radiation striking the Southwestern land suitable for solar power plants could produce as much energy as the country currently uses.

India also is bidding to become a major player in the solar market, having announced its Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in November 2009. Named for India’s first prime minister, the Mission envisions 20,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar power and 2,000 megawatts of distributed, off-grid solar installations by 2022. The planned capacity build-out will be roughly half PV and half concentrating solar thermal power, another budding solar technology. If India meets its target, it would be a tremendous boost for a country with vast solar resources but an estimated 400 million people who lack electricity.

Even with the lingering effects of the global recession, more than 16,000 megawatts of PV are slated to be installed in 2010. Germany will likely again account for half of the newly added capacity, as developers rush to finish projects before cuts in the feed-in tariff fully take hold. Beyond 2010, analysts expect annual PV installations to be more evenly distributed among an expanding roster of countries. With costs dropping, economies of scale growing, and governments realizing the benefits of this limitless, climate-friendly resource, the future for solar power looks bright.

Ref: Earth Poilcy Institute

New Antenna made of Carbon Nanotubes could make Photovoltaic Cells more Efficient, according to MIT Researchers.

2010-09-14T22:55:00.003+05:30

Using carbon nanotubes (hollow tubes of carbon atoms), MIT chemical engineers have found a way to concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell. Such nanotubes could form antennas that capture and focus light energy, potentially allowing much smaller and more powerful solar arrays.

"Instead of having your whole roof be a photovoltaic cell, you could have little spots that were tiny photovoltaic cells, with antennas that would drive photons into them," says Michael Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team.

Strano and his students describe their new carbon nanotube antenna, or "solar funnel," in the Sept. 12 online edition of the journal Nature Materials. Lead authors of the paper are postdoctoral associate Jae-Hee Han and graduate student Geraldine Paulus (pictured above).

Their new antennas might also be useful for any other application that requires light to be concentrated, such as night-vision goggles or telescopes.

Solar panels generate electricity by converting photons (packets of light energy) into an electric current. Strano's nanotube antenna boosts the number of photons that can be captured and transforms the light into energy that can be funneled into a solar cell.

The antenna consists of a fibrous rope about 10 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long and four micrometers thick, containing about 30 million carbon nanotubes. Strano's team built, for the first time, a fiber made of two layers of nanotubes with different electrical properties — specifically, different bandgaps.

In any material, electrons can exist at different energy levels. When a photon strikes the surface, it excites an electron to a higher energy level, which is specific to the material. The interaction between the energized electron and the hole it leaves behind is called an exciton, and the difference in energy levels between the hole and the electron is known as the bandgap.

The inner layer of the antenna contains nanotubes with a small bandgap, and nanotubes in the outer layer have a higher bandgap. That's important because excitons like to flow from high to low energy. In this case, that means the excitons in the outer layer flow to the inner layer, where they can exist in a lower (but still excited) energy state.

Therefore, when light energy strikes the material, all of the excitons flow to the center of the fiber, where they are concentrated. Strano and his team have not yet built a photovoltaic device using the antenna, but they plan to. In such a device, the antenna would concentrate photons before the photovoltaic cell converts them to an electrical current. This could be done by constructing the antenna around a core of semiconducting material.

The interface between the semiconductor and the nanotubes would separate the electron from the hole, with electrons being collected at one electrode touching the inner semiconductor, and holes collected at an electrode touching the nanotubes. This system would then generate electric current. The efficiency of such a solar cell would depend on the materials used for the electrode, according to the researchers.

Strano's team is the first to construct nanotube fibers in which they can control the properties of different layers, an achievement made possible by recent advances in separating nanotubes with different properties.

While the cost of carbon nanotubes was once prohibitive, it has been coming down in recent years as chemical companies build up their manufacturing capacity. "At some point in the near future, carbon nanotubes will likely be sold for pennies per pound, as polymers are sold," says Strano. "With this cost, the addition to a solar cell might be negligible compared to the fabrication and raw material cost of the cell itself, just as coatings and polymer components are small parts of the cost of a photovoltaic cell."

Strano's team is now working on ways to minimize the energy lost as excitons flow through the fiber, and on ways to generate more than one exciton per photon. The nanotube bundles described in the Nature Materials paper lose about 13 percent of the energy they absorb, but the team is working on new antennas that would lose only 1 percent.

REf: MIT News Office

Sweden is a world leader in the field of Bio Energy

2010-09-02T11:01:00.004+05:30

As part of the International Training Programme on "Wind Energy Development and Use" conducted by LIFE Academy and sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Sweden, I had a chance to visit the local Bio Gas Plant at Halland region in Sweden. The Biogas Plant has a 300 cumic meter digester for anaerobic digestion. A mixture of cow dung and vegetable wastes are the main waste feeds in the Plant. The main feature of the Biogas Plant is a Biogas upgrading unit which is used to upgrade a 58% Methane Biogas to a 96% Methane Biogas. After the upgradation the carbon dioxide content in the Biogas is reduced from 37% to 4% and other unwanted gases are initially 5% and later reduced to 0%. This upgraded Biogas is used as the fuel for vehicles in Sweden. I could see a lot of buses and cars running in Sweden utilising Biogas as fuel. In the southern Swedish city of Malmo almost all the buses are powered with Biogas. The whole unit has got a cute Sterling Engine for electricity generation as well.

Newly published energy statistics for 2009 show that bioenergy today makes up a larger share of Sweden’s energy use than oil: 31.7 percent bioenergy compared to 30.8 oil.

The numbers are based on preliminary statistics from the Swedish Energy Agency and were presented by Svebio – the Swedish Bioenergy Association. The final energy use includes all sectors of the Swedish society: industry, transport, residential, services, etc.

Svebios analyses also shows that the total share of renewable energy, using the definition in EU:s renewable energy directive (RED), was 46.3 percent in 2009. This is well ahead of the EU target trajectory, and only 3.7 percent short of the EU target for Sweden of 49 percent in 2020. The major renewable energy source beside bioenergy is hydropower. Wind power is still a relatively small contributor to the energy supply.

The main reason for the fast increase of renewable energy in recent years is the steady growth of bioenergy use. Biomass is the primary energy source in the district heating sector, which supplies more than half of the total heat demand in the residential sector. The use of by-products and residues in the forest industry is another major component. Bioelectricity has expanded both with combined heat and power plants in district heating and in the forest industry. Pellets and fuelwood play a major role in heating of single homes. Finally, more than 5 percent of transport fuels are biofuels – ethanol, biodiesel and biogas. In all, the Swedish bioenergy business sector is in a phase of strong expansion, which is confirmed by the statistics.

This was very interesting to me because of the potential of biogas plants in India. In India we have got 42.6 lakhs Family Type Biogas Plants (up to 30th June 2010, according the Minstry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Website, Govt. of India). However the total capacity or the other statistics of Community based biogas plants is unknown. In India , most of the Biogas Plants are producing Raw Biogas which is generally used for cooking purposes. In some cases electricity is generated for lighting purposes without proper upgradation. The Biogas upgradation technology and the potential of upgradation is very important if we are using biogas as a fuel for transportation. This is has to be brought to the attention of researchers, investers and project developers who want to invest in India in the Biogas sector.

Americans Using Less Energy and More Renewables

2010-09-01T00:28:00.007+05:30

The United States has significantly reduced their energy consumption and making use of more renewable energy sources.

The United States used significantly less coal and petroleum in 2009 than in 2008, and significantly more wind power. There also was a decline in natural gas use and increases in solar, hydro and geothermal power according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

"Energy use tends to follow the level of economic activity, and that level declined last year. At the same time, higher efficiency appliances and vehicles reduced energy use even further," said A.J. Simon, an LLNL energy systems analyst who develops the energy flow charts using data provided by the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration.

"As a result, people and businesses are using less energy in general."

The estimated U.S. energy use in 2009 equaled 94.6 quadrillion BTUs ("quads"), down from 99.2 quadrillion BTUs in 2008. (A BTU or British Thermal Unit is a unit of measurement for energy, and is equivalent to about 1.055 kilojoules).

Energy use in the residential, commercial, industrial and transportation arenas all declined by .22, .09, 2.16 and .88 quads, respectively.

Wind power increased dramatically in 2009 to.70 quads of primary energy compared to .51 in 2008. Most of that energy is tied directly to electricity generation and thus helps decrease the use of coal for electricity production.

"The increase in renewables is a really good story, especially in the wind arena," Simon said. "It's a result of very good incentives and technological advancements. In 2009, the technology got better and the incentives remained relatively stable. The investments put in place for wind in previous years came online in 2009. Even better, there are more projects in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond."

The significant decrease in coal used to produce electricity can be attributed to three factors: overall lower electricity demand, a fuel shift to natural gas, and an offset created by more wind power production, according to Simon.

Nuclear energy use remained relatively flat in 2009. No new plants were added or taken offline in this interval, and the existing fleet operated slightly less than in 2008.

Of the 94.6 quads consumed, only 39.97 ended up as energy services. Energy services, such as lighting and machinery output, are harder to estimate than fuel consumption, Simon said.

"The reduction in the use of natural gas, coal and petroleum is commensurate with a reduction in carbon emissions," he said. "Simply said, people are doing less stuff. Therefore, they're burning less fuel."

Ref: DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

New Photovoltaic Test Center opens in India

2010-08-31T19:01:00.003+05:30

As India’s National Solar Mission starts to take effect, with solar capacity increasing rapidly across the country, TUV Rheinland has opened its seventh laboratory worldwide for testing solar modules and systems. The test facility is located in Electronics City in Bangalore.

The world leader in independent safety and quality testing for solar modules has invested €2 million in the new solar test centre, which in particular will offer services to India's growing solar industry.

In this way, TUV Rheinland is filling a significant gap for Indian industry, which previously did not have access to large test facilities on such a scale. The test centre has 2,000 square metres of space, including an outside test field of 500 square metres, with equipment such as five climate chambers and two sun simulators. This makes it one of the most up to date PV testing laboratories in the entire South Asian economic area.

"Our investment programme for the solar industry aims to place our services within easy reach of companies in and for all booming markets and to offer them large test capacities. India cannot be neglected here. In addition, all our customers can call upon the decades of expertise gained by our now 180 experts around the world to test and certify systems, modules and components", declared Friedrich Hecker, CEO of TUV Rheinland AG. This is made possible by the extremely close interlinking of all seven of TUV Rheinland's test laboratories. This goes for both photovoltaics and solar thermal technology.

Quality and safety testing

The new test centre located in Electronics City strengthens TUV Rheinland's service offering in India for solar power stations, encompassing planning, consulting, operation and maintenance. In addition, services will be provided for ensuring the quality and safety of modules and components, as well as monitoring production quality. When testing and certifying according to IEC and other international standards, the experts in the laboratory can make use of the latest test facilities.

Around 80% of all solar module manufacturers have their products tested at TUV Rheinland in order to obtain national and international certification. TUV Rheinland operates test laboratories for solar modules worldwide and aside from Bangalore, has test centres in Germany (Cologne), Shanghai, the Taiwanese city of Taichun, in Tempe, Arizona and two facilities in Yokohama (GTAC and SEAC) which recently expanded their accreditations and now include ANSI/UL 1703. All laboratories comply with the latest technical standards, as they have been launched or modernised in the last 24 months.

"All our laboratories are working closely together and contribute to our global PV business. We are delighted about the opening of the new Indian facility which will enable us to cover the expanding demand and expected growth in the Asian region and continue to offer tailor made solutions that suit the needs of our customers", says Mr. Stefan Kiehn, Head of the PV testing facilities at TUV Rheinland Japan.

TUV Rheinland is a leading group for the provision of technical services worldwide. It has over 490 locations in 61 countries on all five continents. Its workforce of 13,850is dedicated to the sustainable development of safety and quality standards. The motivating factor for TUV Rheinland employees is the conviction that without technical progress, society and industry cannot grow. For this very reason, using technical innovations, products and equipment in a safe, responsible manner is of decisive importance.

Ref: http://www.tuv.com/in/en/index.html

Breakthrough in Thin-Film Solar Cells

2010-07-30T14:39:00.003+05:30

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Mainz have made a major breakthrough in their search for more efficient thin-film solar cells. Computer simulations designed to investigate the so-called indium/gallium puzzle have highlighted a new way of increasing the efficiency of CIGS thin-film solar cells. Researchers to date have achieved only about 20% efficiency with CIGS cells although efficiency levels of 30% are theoretically possible.

Thin-film solar cells are gaining an ever increasing proportion of the solar cell market. As they are only a few micrometers thick, they offer savings on material and manufacturing costs. Currently, the highest level of efficiency of about 20% is achieved by CIGS thin-film solar cells, which absorb the sunlight through a thin layer made of copper, indium, gallium, selenium, and sulphur. However, the levels of efficiency achieved to date are nowhere near the levels theoretically possible.

The research team at Mainz University headed by Professor Dr Claudia Felser is using computer simulations to investigate the characteristics of CIGS, whose chemical formula is Cu(In,Ga)(Se,S)2. This research forms part of the comCIGS project funded by the Federal German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU). IBM Mainz and Schott AG are collaborating with the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the Helmholtz Center Berlin for Materials and Energy and Jena University in the project that is targeted at finding ways of optimizing CIGS solar cells. The researchers focused in particular on the indium/gallium puzzle that has been baffling scientists for years: Although it has been postulated on the basis of calculations that the optimal indium:gallium ratio should be 30:70, in practice, the maximum efficiency level has been achieved with the exactly inverse ratio of 70:30.

With the support of IBM Mainz, Christian Ludwig of Professor Felser's team undertook new calculations with the help of a hybrid method in which he used a combination of density functional calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. "Density functional calculations make it possible to assess the energies of local structures from the quantum mechanical point of view. The results can be used to determine temperature effects over wide length scale ranges with the help of Monte-Carlo simulations," Dr Thomas Gruhn, head of the theory group in Professor Felser's team, explains the methods used. Christian Ludwig is able to use a mainframe for his investigations that was recently donated to Mainz University by IBM as part of a Shared University Research (SUR) science award.

Production at high temperatures promotes homogeneity of the material

With the aid of the simulations, it was discovered that the indium and gallium atoms are not distributed evenly in the CIGS material. There is a phase that occurs at just below normal room temperature in which the indium and gallium are completely separate. If the material is heated to above this demixing temperature, differently sized clusters of indium and gallium atoms do form. The higher the temperature, the more homogeneous the material becomes. It has now become apparent that gallium-rich CIGS is always less homogeneous than indium-rich CIGS. Because of this lack of homogeneity, the optoelectronic properties of the gallium-rich material are poorer, resulting in the low efficiency levels of gallium-rich CIGS cells -- an effect that has now been explained for the first time. The calculations also provide a concrete indication of the best way to manufacture CIGS solar cells. If it is produced at higher temperatures, the material is significantly more homogeneous. To retain the desired homogeneity, the material then needs to be cooled down sufficiently rapidly.

In practice, it was the limited heat resistance of the glass used as a substrate for solar cells that has always restricted process temperatures, but a significant breakthrough has also recently been made here. Schott AG has developed a special glass with which the process temperature can be increased to well above 600°C. The cells that result from this process are considerably more homogeneous, meaning that the production of cells with a much greater efficiency level has become possible. But the comCIGS project researchers are already thinking ahead of this. "We are currently working on large-format solar cells which should outperform conventional cells in terms of efficiency," states Gruhn. "The prospects look promising."

The work of the scientists in Mainz, conducted as part of the federal government-funded comCIGS project, has been published in the latest edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.

Journal Reference:

1.Christian Ludwig, Thomas Gruhn, Claudia Felser, Tanja Schilling, Johannes Windeln, Peter Kratzer. Indium-Gallium Segregation in CuIn_{x}Ga_{1-x}Se_{2}: An Ab Initio%u2013Based Monte Carlo Study

IRENA becomes a fully fledged International Organisation

2010-07-08T17:20:00.003+05:30

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) becomes a fully fledged International Organization. Created in January 2009 with 75 Member States, IRENA has grown in just over a year to become one of the largest international organizations. 147 countries and the European Union already signed its statute.

The 25th instrument of ratification was deposited in Berlin on June 8th and according to Article XIX, the treaty enters into force 30 days after. 29 Member States have now ratified the Treaty.

In June 2009, Abu Dhabi was elected as IRENA’s Headquarters. The first international organization of the 21st century is also the first to be headquartered in the Gulf Region. Hélène Pelosse, Interim Director-General comments, “With 98 billion barrels, Abu Dhabi is the 7th proven oil reserve in the world. Nevertheless Abu Dhabi is committed to achieve 7% renewable energy in 2020 and to invest 10% of its GDP in Masdar, a zero carbon city. The United Arab Emirates are IRENA’s home and this far sighted country has continuously proved a very strong support for the Agency”.

Hélène Pelosse was elected as Interim Director-General one year ago at the age of 39. Mother of three, she states, “We cannot rely on energy of the past to power our future. Now renewables account for 18% of world electricity production but potential scenarios show it can reach 50% or even higher. It is the only energy source which can serve the needs of the predicted nine billion earth population in 2050”.

Improving the renewable energy share in the energy mix is a direct way of tackling climate change and GHG emission reduction. Whilst also encouraging energy security and independence. Furthermore, it also offers strong support for both economic and social growth.

The International Renewable Energy Agency is aiming to become the global voice for renewable energy. The Agency’s mandate is to assist its Member States define their strategy across the fields of all renewable energies: bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind.

Switching off your lights has a bigger impact, according to a new study

2010-07-03T18:09:00.004+05:30

We supported the Earth Hour 2010 by switching off our lights on March 27. During the hour people across the world turned off their lights and joined a common movement to protect our climate and combat global warming.

Earth Hour was organized by WWF, one of the world’s largest and most respected independent conservation organizations on a mission to stop the degradation of the Earth’s natural environment and build a future where people live in harmony with nature.

Switching off lights, turning the television off at the mains and using cooler washing cycles could have a much bigger impact on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power stations than previously thought, according to a new study published this month in the journal Energy Policy. The study shows that the figure used by government advisors to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide saved by reducing people's electricity consumption is up to 60 percent too low.

The power stations that supply electricity vary in their carbon dioxide emission rates, depending on the fuel they use: those that burn fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) have higher emissions than those driven by nuclear power and wind. In general only the fossil fuel power stations are able to respond instantly to changes in electricity demand.

Dr Adam Hawkes, the author of the new study from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, says the government should keep track of changing carbon emission rates from power stations to ensure that policy decisions for reducing emissions are based on robust scientific evidence. The new study suggests that excluding power stations with low carbon emission rates, such as wind and nuclear power stations, and focussing on those that deal with fluctuating demand would give a more accurate emission figure.

Scientists advising government on for the best ways to reduce electricity demand currently use an estimated figure for emission rates. The new study shows that, at 0.43 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity consumed, this figure is 60 percent lower than the actual rates observed between 2002 and 2009 (0.69 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour), meaning that policy studies are underestimating the impact of people reducing their electricity use.

Dr Adam Hawkes, author of the paper, and a Visiting Fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said: "One way governments are trying to mitigate the effects of climate change is to encourage people to reduce their energy consumption and change the types of technologies they use in their homes. However, the UK government currently informs its policy decisions based on an estimate that, according to my research, is lower than it should be.

"This means any reduction we make in our electricity use -- for example, if everyone switched off lights that they weren't using, or turned off electric heating earlier in the year -- could have a bigger impact on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by power stations than previously thought. However, this also acts in reverse: a small increase in the amount of electricity we use could mean a larger increase in emissions than we previously thought, so we need to make sure we do everything we can to reduce our electricity use," added Dr Hawkes.

Dr Hawkes drew upon 60 million data points showing the amount of electricity produced in each half-hour period by each power station in Great Britain from the start of 2002 to the end of 2009. He also calculated the emissions of each different type of generator by examining government data showing their average annual fuel use. Finally, he took these two sets of data to calculate the emissions rate that should be attributed to a small change in electricity demand.

The results show that, for 2002-09, the carbon dioxide emission rate for estimating the effect of a small change in electricity demand is 0.69 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity consumed. This is 30 percent higher than the average emissions rate across all power stations, which is 0.51 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour, and 60 percent higher than the figure currently used by government advisors, which is 0.43 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour.

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of Imperial's Grantham Institute for Climate Change, said: "This is a very important study that could help policy makers make more informed decisions to reduce our carbon emissions. The government needs a good understanding of the figures it uses to support policy analysis, because this has a big impact on which technologies we employ to reduce our energy use. With a more accurate picture of what is going on, we will be much better equipped to tackle our carbon dioxide emissions."

Reference:

A.D. Hawkes: Estimating marginal CO2 emission rates for national electricity systems (Energy Policy 2020)

Astonfield Renewable Resources and Belectric are to build a 5MW solar power plant in Osiyan in the Indian State of Rajasthan

2010-06-06T21:57:00.002+05:30

The Osiyan project is one of several Astonfield plants expected to be approved under the Migration Phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission and will be Astonfield’s first solar power plant to be commissioned and come online in the 2010-2011 financial year.

Belectric has already completed site designs and engineering on the plant. The construction will begin immediately following Migration approval.

Belectric is one of the largest photovoltaic (PV) system integrators in the world, with over 75 commissioned power plants in Europe to date. In addition to plant design, construction and commissioning, Belectric will also provide operations and maintenance (O&M) services for the plant. The Osiyan power plant will be the first utility-scale solar power plant commissioned by Belectric under India’s National Solar Mission.

The 5MW solar power plant located in the Jodhpur District of Rajasthan will sit on 30 acres of land. A total of 185 acres has been secured under a long term lease to allow for an additional 20MW build out in the future. The Osiyan plant is expected to bring over a hundred jobs to the local community and has the capacity to power approximately 13,000 homes.

“Consistent with our strategy to partner with global technology leaders, Astonfield has formalized a tie-up with Belectric to build one of the first utility-scale projects under India’s National Solar Mission. We look forward to working with Belectric in commissioning this first 5MW PV plant in Rajasthan, which will serve as a foundational project in our partnership and in the build out of India’s solar industry,” said Ameet Shah, Co-Chairman of Astonfield.

“India has become one of the most promising solar markets in the world today, and Astonfield has been a catalyst in the market’s development. The partnership between Belectric and Astonfield will play a key role in the fulfillment of India’s solar potential under the National Solar Mission,” added Bernhard Beck, CEO of Belectric.

ic is one of the largest photovoltaic (PV) system integrators in the world, with over 75 commissioned power plants in Europe to date. In addition to plant design, construction and commissioning, Belectric will also provide operations and maintenance (O&M) services for the plant. The Osiyan power plant will be the first utility-scale solar power plant commissioned by Belectric under India’s National Solar Mission.

The 5MW solar power plant located in the Jodhpur District of Rajasthan will sit on 30 acres of land. A total of 185 acres has been secured under a long term lease to allow for an additional 20MW build out in the future. The Osiyan plant is expected to bring over a hundred jobs to the local community and has the capacity to power approximately 13,000 homes.

“Consistent with our strategy to partner with global technology leaders, Astonfield has formalized a tie-up with Belectric to build one of the first utility-scale projects under India’s National Solar Mission. We look forward to working with Belectric in commissioning this first 5MW PV plant in Rajasthan, which will serve as a foundational project in our partnership and in the build out of India’s solar industry,” stated Ameet Shah, Co-Chairman of Astonfield.

“India has become one of the most promising solar markets in the world today, and Astonfield has been a catalyst in the market’s development. The partnership between Belectric and Astonfield will play a key role in the fulfillment of India’s solar potential under the National Solar Mission,” commented Bernhard Beck, CEO of Belectric.

Indian Solar PV Module Capacity to touch 1250 MW

2010-05-31T16:03:00.005+05:30

A recent report by India Semiconductor Association (ISA) has said that photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules capacity in the country is expected to touch 750MW and 1250MW by the end of 2010.

The report titled ‘Solar PV Industry 2010: Contemporary Scenario and Emerging Trends’ was released by the principal scientific adviser, government of India Mr. R Chidambaram along with professor Juzer Vasi, IIT Bombay and head core committee and BV Naidu, advisor, ISA.

The repot aims to be useful to various stakeholders in the solar PV industry in India. The technology provides an alternative power source to the fossils and is expected to be big in the future. It is an important technology in the context of the climate change.

The industry receives help from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) which is an important component in the National Action Plan on Climate Change.

The current capacity in India is at 400MW for cells and about 1,000 MW for modules. The manufacturing facilities in the industry in India mainly comprises of cell and module with most of the Value addition happening abroad.

The report provides an overview of the global trends in PV industry, position of Indian solar PV industry the Indian government initiatives aimed at this industry. The report outlines some strengths and challenges of the industry in India.

The main strength of the industry is that the production is very cost effective despite the fact that the industry is small. This makes the components produces here preferable by clients in countries like Germany and Spain where the costs are very high.

The government initiatives including those under the JNNSM are fostering growth in the industry. The country however lacks the local producers of basic raw material that is silicon wafers hence making firms reply on foreign made silicon wafers. The fluctuations and availability of the raw material is also a challenge for the industry in India.

The major challenge before the solar energy components worldwide is its costs and the reductions will help it greatly in the future.