Rising oil prices makes renewable energy attractive

With fuel prices soaring, renewable energy is being promoted by the state government here.
The West Bengal Green Energy Development Corporation Ltd (WBGEDC), a government agency floated for the development of green energy, is likely to come up with "renewable policy energy" framework by the end of this year

The focus areas of the policy would be to formulate certain concessions to be given to those using renewable energy, like rebate in municipal tax among other benefits, said S P Gon Chaudhuri, managing director of WBGEDCL, on the sidelines of a press conference to announce its tie-up with a Kolkata-based real estate developer to transfer green energy techniques, in Kolkata on Wednesday.

The tariff policy on the use of renewable energy was already in place in West Bengal, said Gon Chaudhuri. The policy would be divided into two parts, covering benefits to the people residing in buildings where renewable energy was being used, and independent power producers, he said. This apart, the policy will also promote the use of bio-fuels, by giving certain concessions to farmers undertaking Jatropha cultivation.

The corporation would assist the farmers in procuring Jatropha seeds and selling the end products in the market, he said. The states of Mizoram and Tripura, and union territory of Andaman and Nicobar, have also approached the WBGEDC for framing a similar policies.

"We would act as a consultant for preparing a renewable energy policy for states like like Mizoram and Tripura," he said.

The policy would be formulated with help from Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management (IISWBM), he added. It will be placed before the state cabinet by the end of this year.

Benefits of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy can supply a significant proportion of the United States' energy needs, creating many public benefits for the nation and for states and regions, including environmental improvement, increased fuel diversity and national security, and regional economic development benefits.

Environmental Benefits

Using fossil fuels -- coal, oil and natural gas -- to make electricity dirties the nation's air, consumes and pollutes water, hurts plants and animal life, creates toxic wastes, and causes global warming. Using nuclear fuels poses serious safety risks. Renewable energy resources can provide many immediate environmental benefits by avoiding these impacts and risks and can help conserve fossil resources for future generations. Of course, renewable energy also has environmental impacts. For example, biomass plants produce some emissions, and fuel can be harvested at unsustainable rates. Windfarms change the landscape, and some have harmed birds. Hydro projects, if their impacts are not mitigated, can greatly affect wildlife and ecosystems. However, these impacts -- which are discussed in Appendix A -- are generally much smaller and more localized than those of fossil and nuclear fuels. Care must nevertheless be taken to mitigate them.

Air Pollution

Clean air is essential to life and good health. Air pollution aggravates asthma, the number one children's health problem. Air pollution also causes disease and even premature death among vulnerable populations, including children, the elderly, and people with lung disease. A 1996 analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council of studies by the American Cancer Society and Harvard Medical School suggests that small particles in the air may be responsible for as many as 64,000 deaths each year from heart and lung disease.[1] As the figure below shows, air pollution is responsible for more deaths than motor vehicle accidents, and ranks higher than many other serious health threats.[2] A few of the most important pollutants are discussed below.[3]

Sulfur oxides

Electricity production, primarily from burning coal, is the source of most emissions of sulfur oxides (SOx), as the figure shows. These chemicals are the main cause of acid rain, which can make lakes and rivers too acidic for plant and animal life. Acid rain also damages crops and buildings. National reductions in sulfur oxides required by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 may not be sufficient to end damage from acid rain in the northeastern United States.[4] SO2 is also a primary source of fine particles in the air.

Nitrogen oxides

Burning fossil fuels either to produce electricity or to power transportation emits nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the air. In the presence of sunlight, nitrogen oxides combine with other chemicals to form ground-level ozone (smog). Both nitrogen oxides and ozone can irritate the lungs, cause bronchitis and pneumonia, and decrease resistance to respiratory infections. In addition, research shows that ozone may be harmful even at levels allowed by federal air standards. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published a new rule reducing nitrogen oxide emissions from 0.12 parts per million to 0.08 parts per million. States have until 2003 to submit plans for meeting the new standard and up to 12 years to achieve it.[5]

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important of the greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere. Electricity generation is, as the figure shows, the largest industrial source of carbon dioxide emissions and a close second to the transportation sector.

Samples from air bubbles trapped deep in ice from Antarctica show that carbon dioxide and global temperature have been closely linked for 160,000 years. Over the last 150 years, burning fossil fuels has resulted in the highest levels of carbon dioxide ever recorded. In 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- an authoritative international scientific body -- concluded that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate."[6] All 10 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last 15 years. The 1990s have already been warmer than the 1980s -- the warmest previous decade on record, according to the Goddard Institute of Space Studies.[7]

Without action, carbon dioxide levels would double in the next 50 to 100 years, increasing global temperatures by 1.8 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat trapped in the atmosphere would cause expansion of the ocean's volume as surface water warms and melt some glaciers. A two-foot rise in sea level could flood 5,000 square miles of dry land in the United States, and another 5,000 square miles of coastal wetlands, as the figure shows. From 17 to 43 percent of coastal wetland-prime fish and bird habitat-could be lost. Building dikes and barriers could reduce flooding of dry land, but would increase wetland loss. Impacts on island nations and low-lying countries, like Egypt and Bangladesh, would be much worse.

Altered weather patterns from changes in climate may result in more extreme weather events. Some areas will suffer more drought and others more flooding, putting crop production under great stress in some regions. The character of our forests could change dramatically. Other expected impacts include an increase in heat-related deaths, increased loss of animal and plant species, and the spread of pests and diseases into new regions with less resistance to them.[8]

In 1997, at a conference in Kyoto, Japan, the developed nations of the world agreed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The United States agreed to 7 percent reductions from 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. Senate ratification of this agreement remains uncertain, however.

SunPower increasing solar cell capacity by 150 percent in 2008

In announcing financial results for the first quarter of 2008, SunPower Corporation stated that it would be increasing solar cell capacity by 150 percent in 2008, compared to capacity levels in 2007. The company also said that nearly half of its cell production was its ‘Gen2’ solar cell technology that has a minimum conversion efficiency of 22 percent.

“Our proprietary technology delivers the highest output per unit area of any commercially available solar system and we intend to leverage this technology by aggressively expanding our solar cell production by more than 150 percent in 2008 compared to 2007,” commented Tom Werner, SunPower's CEO, in a financial statement. “This scale, combined with lower silicon costs, higher efficiencies, thinner wafers and on-going quality and cost improvements in our factories, will drive unit cost reduction. During the first quarter of 2008, we continued to meet or exceed our manufacturing targets across both of our fabs and our panel manufacturing facility.”

The company also noted that it has secured 100 percent of its required polysilicon supply through 2010 to meet its revised capacity expansion plans. Last year, SunPower projected that production would top 250MW in 2008. However, revised figures revealed by the company show that figure to be 255MW for 2008.

The same is true for 2009. SunPower previously stated that it would produce 430MW in 2009; that figure has been raised to 450MW-plus. For 2010, the company is still expecting production of 650MW-plus, but has not adjusted the baseline figure upwards.

SunPower also reiterated that its capacity ramp at Fab 2 remained on schedule and was expected to be completed by the end of 2009. Its fourth solar panel manufacturing line had also completed its production ramp allowing the company to produce more than half of its PV panels in-house.

Sun Power - the real power

SunPower, which makes solar cells and panels, says it has boosted the efficiency and size of its solar panels, yielding substantially more electricity than current panels.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company on Monday announced its second-generation, higher-power product at the Solar Power 2006 conference, and the panels are expected to be in mass production next year.

SunPower says it has managed to increase efficiency of the silicon cells from 20 percent to 22 percent. Further, the 5-foot by 3-and-a-half-foot panels will pack 96 individual cells within them, compared to the 72 contained in the company?s current product.

Overall, these changes result in a 43 percent increase in power, said Julie Blunden, vice president of external affairs at SunPower. Each panel can generate 315 watts of electricity and will have roughly the same cost per watt as the existing line, she said.

The theoretical limit of monocrystalline silicon cell efficiency is about 25 percent, Blunden said.

Other companies are developing solar photovoltaic manufacturing techniques around other materials, notably CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide).

But SunPower, which is owned by Cypress Semiconductor, intends to continue investing in higher solar efficiency and ways to lower the cost of installation, Blunden said.

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Solar Energy – Turning Sunlight into Electricity

Solar energy could be used to generate electricity on a large scale if solutions were found for certain problems. At present it is too difficult to produce large amounts of solar energy and store it for times when the sun is not available such as overnight, on overcast days or at high latitudes. However let’s take a look at the way in which sunlight can be turned in a source of electrical power.

Solar energy keeps us all alive. The heat and light from the sun is what keeps the earth at the correct temperature. It is the sun’s energy that keeps almost all living organisms alive. It is the sun that determines natural systems and cycles. About 95% of the energy from the sun is given off as light that we can see. However the light that we can see is only a small amount of the sun’s total energy.

The "photovoltaic effect" is a process through which a PV cell changes sunlight into electricity. The light from the sun is made up of photons. These are particles of solar energy. Depending on their wavelengths, each photon contains different amounts of energy. When photons strike a PV cell they are reflected, absorbed, or pass right through.

So how does solar energy produce electricity? When a photon is absorbed it can generate electricity. Then the energy of the photon is transferred to an electron in the PV cell (a semiconductor). The electron escapes and becomes part of an electrical circuit. When it escapes it makes a tiny hole. The PV cell has a built-in electric field. This enables the cell to provide the voltage needed to drive the electrical current into a light bulb.

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Generating Power from Solar Energy

How Sunlight is Converted to Electricity Using Photovoltaic Process

Solar power is electricity that is generated from sunlight, and is a common choice of renewable energy for households and for large companies. There are two basic forms of solar power in current use: photovoltaics and solar thermal power.

Photovoltaic Solar Power

Photovoltaic systems, such as conventional solar panels, directly convert sunlight into energy using the principles of the photovoltaic effect. The photovoltaic effect takes advantage of the properties of semiconductor materials, with silicon being the primary material used in photovoltaic solar cells. When photons strike the solar cell, electrons in the semiconductor material are shaken loose, allowing them to flow as electricity. This electricity is direct current (DC), and can be directly used to charge batteries, or can be connected to an inverter to power alternating current (AC) components, or to be connected to the local electrical grid.

Traditional photovoltaic systems are based on silicon. Silicon ingots are sliced into wafers that are fabricated into cells. Cells are combined into modules, which are packaged into end-user systems. Silicon-based solar cells have efficiencies of approximately 14-19%. However, newer systems that use gallium arsenide, another semiconductor material, can be made into thinner and more flexible modules. These "thin film" modules can presently produce efficiencies up to 30%, but currently cost more to fabricate than traditional silicon-based modules.

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