News

The Internet of Things (IOT)-enabled solar tree—using 35 solar PV panels with a 330 Wp capacity each—is especially useful for the agricultural community in providing electricity for high-capacity water pumps, e-tractors and e-power tillers. It can also allow precision agriculture through IoT-enabled features such as real-time humidity, wind speed, rainfall prediction, and soil health monitoring.

The nation’s largest electricity consumer is working towards installing 500 MW of rooftop solar generation capacity by 2021-22. Besides, it aims to establish an aggregate 20 GW ground-mount solar capacity by 2030, which shall come up over 51,000 hectares of its trackside vacant land.

The National Institute of Wind Energy has invited bids to install and commission a 1 MW (AC) grid-connected solar power plant at Madurai Kamaraj University in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. Bidding closes on September 17.

September 10 is the last date to submit bids for supply, installation, and commissioning of hybrid solar inverter-cum-charge controllers of ratings 5 kVA (193 quantities), 10 kVA (32), and 15 kVA (5). All the inverters are to be delivered by November 12. 

A new study by CEEW Centre for Energy Finance assesses the competitive advantage that China has over India and presents a suite of short-term and long-term interventions required for a globally competitive solar manufacturing sector in India.

India’s solar tariffs—whilst some of the lowest in the world—are almost double the Gulf region’s US¢1.35-1.80/kWh.

We increasingly need safe, affordable, and powerful batteries as we move to greener technologies. Battery-powered electric cars, for example, have much higher safety standards than our phones, and for such vehicles to travel long distances, lighter batteries with higher energy density and rapid-charging capabilities would make a world of difference. Majid Rasool, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, discusses a potential solution.

The Solar Power Developers Association (SPDA) said one-year safeguard duty extension had already resulted in escalated capital costs. Any additional tariff barriers would jeopardize the Government’s ‘100 GW by 2022’ target.

International thinktank IEEFA says there are 50 viable green hydrogen projects under development with an estimated renewable energy capacity of 50 GW and the potential to produce 4 million tonnes of the fuel annually.

During the financial year 2019-20, Chinese manufacturer Risen was the second-largest PV module supplier to Indian solar installations, accounting for around 9.9% of the overall shipments.