Energy Storage

The solar sector in India bounced back to make 2021 the best year in new PV capacity addition. The year also witnessed a massive response to PLI tender for solar manufacturing and launch of 50 GWh battery cell tender and green hydrogen mission.

State-owned NTPC Limited has selected California-headquartered Bloom Energy’s electrolyzer and hydrogen-powered fuel cell technologies for the nation’s first green hydrogen-based energy storage deployment.

The device was designed by scientists in Portugal to optimize light absorption by the semiconductor and ensure an effective diffusion of redox species while offering minimal electronic and ionic transport resistance. The cell has a 25cm2 photoactive area and relies on ferrocyanide/anthraquinone redox flow chemistry and a nanostructured hematite photoelectrode.

The mission envisages commercial production of green hydrogen production in the nation from the financial year 2025-26 onwards.

Sentient Labs has launched a hydrogen fuel cell bus that runs on an indigenously developed hydrogen fuel cell and electric powertrain. The hydrogen fuel cell was developed in collaboration with the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) and Central Electro Chemical Research Institute under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. 

Amid the troubles of the coal-dominated grid, variable renewable energy has a place in ensuring reliable supply

The project would be a test case to assess the potential of solar-powered hydrogen to displace costly and polluting diesel-based energy generation systems in far-off regions of the country like Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir. 

Developed by Canada-based Hydrogen Optimized, the electrolyzer can be used to stabilize electrical grids and optimize energy recovery from intermittent renewable power sources such as solar and wind. Furthermore, this week four more big international partnerships for developing green hydrogen were announced across Germany, the Middle East, and Australia.

Microgrids that use on-site renewables such as rooftop solar can help relieve peak demand on the grid during afternoons, and later in the evenings through battery storage. This can help power distribution companies (discoms) avoid buying expensive power to meet peak demand.

An Italian company has developed a system that can store energy from wind, solar and grid electricity by compressing and using CO2 without any emissions. The system draws CO2 from an inflatable atmospheric gas holder, stores it, and uses it to produce power again, when demand for stored energy arises.