Technology

Ather Energy, an Indian electric scooter maker, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Tamil Nadu to open a new production facility for lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles.

There will be plenty of opportunity for electric three-wheeler penetration in the Indian market through the model of battery swapping as well as local charging points available at delivery hubs.

The investment will be used to establish an extra-high-voltage transmission link between Virudhunagar and Coimbatore to transfer the additional generation capacity of 9 GW, including 6 GW from renewables, by 2025 to meet the increased power demand in the Chennai–Kanyakumari Industrial Corridor.

While BHEL will primarily produce Li-ion cells for ISRO and other strategic sector programmes, it can also suitably modify the space-grade cells—and thus leading to cost reduction—to meet the requirements of commercial applications.

The pilot plants—installed at a temple and a school—work on a membrane-based electrodialysis technology to provide clean drinking water.

Exicom Tele-Systems will recycle electric vehicle batteries at the end of their lifecycle to develop custom battery packs for non-automotive applications such as home inverters, commercial & industrial UPS, and renewable energy storage.

The crystalline solar cells and modules manufacturer—which has 200 MW of cell line and 250 MW of module line capacity—has secured orders equal to full production capacity for both cells and modules till March 2020.

December 5 is the last date to submit proposals for the joint research program on advanced materials for next-generation solar energy utilization and energy storage that will sponsor around 10 projects. The maximum funding available for all research projects approved is Rs40 million for the Indian side and 4,000,000 NIS for the Israeli side, for a period of two years.

While it has often been referred to as “the future of PV” in recent years, discussions surrounding bifacial technology are now very much in the present. Modules are beginning to roll off production lines in significant numbers, and industry players are boasting of gigawatts of bifacial projects that are already installed or in the late stages of development. But it’s still early days for the technology, and there are questions to answer for it to achieve its full potential. pv magazine investigates the modeling and optimization of bifacial PV’s performance.

The recently proposed guidelines allow electricity cost reduction of only Rs 3.64/unit for commercial and industrial consumers, which is not even sufficient to recover the capital costs of setting up the solar infrastructure.