India's installed renewable energy capacity reaches 132.15 GW

Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay As of 29 February 2020, India’s cumulative renewable energy capacity stood at 132.15 Giga Watts, with an additional capacity of 46.69 GW under various stages of implementation and 34.07 GW under various stages of bidding. As on same date, the country had cumulative installed capacity of 138.93 GW from non-fossil fuels sources. The cumulative renewable energy capacity and cumulative capacity from non-fossil fuel sources constituted 35.80 per cent and 37.63 per cent of total electricity generation capacity of 369.12 GW installed in the country as on 29 February 2020, respectively. As part of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions as per the Paris Accord on Climate Change, India has undertaken to install at least 40 per cent of its total electricity generation capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. India has set itself an ambitious target of 175 Giga Watts (GW) of renewable capacity by the year 2022, and is aiming at 450 GW by 2030. India’s primary energy consumption hit 809.2 million tonnes of oil equivalent in 2018, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy. On this metric, the country is behind only China and the US. India’s installed capacity — for all energy sources — was a little under 369 GW at the end of January 2020, according to government figures. Source:...
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Spain: Government expects solar to dominate by 2030 with up to 77 GW

Spain has currently an installed PV power of around 4.8 GW. Image: Solaria Energía In a new report, the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Digital Agenda has predicted that solar will become the country’s largest electricity source by the end of the next decade. Cumulative installed PV power could even reach 77 GW by the end of 2030, according to the most bullish scenario drafted by the Spanish government.APRIL 3, 2018 EMILIANO BELLINI Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Digital Agenda has published a new report, including new growth scenarios for the future of the Spanish energy market, which recognizes solar as the future cheapest source of power, and the dominance of PV above all other energy sources by 2030. The first scenario, called the “distributed generation scenario” (DG), forecasts strong development of renewable energy distributed generation coupled with storage systems. According to the most optimistic figures provided by the ministry, solar is expected to reach a power production capacity of 47.1 TWh by 2030, thus becoming the country’s leading power source, followed by wind (31.0 TWh), combined cycle plants (24.5 TWh), hydropower (23.0 TWh), cogeneration facilities (8.5 TWh), and nuclear power (7.1 TWh). Overall, storage is expected to account for 2.3 TWh of total demand. Under...
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Researchers develop novel method to turn footsteps into usable electricity

New York: Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an inexpensive, simple method that allows them to convert footsteps into usable electricity. The method puts to good use a common waste material -- wood pulp. The pulp, which is already a common component of flooring, is partly made of cellulose nanofibers. They are tiny fibers that, when chemically treated, produce an electrical charge when they come in contact with untreated nanofibers. When the nanofibers are embedded within flooring, they are able to produce electricity that can be harnessed to power lights or charge batteries. And because wood pulp is a cheap, abundant and renewable waste product of several industries, flooring that incorporates the new technology could be as affordable as conventional materials. While there are existing similar materials for harnessing footstep energy, they are costly, nonrecyclable, and impractical at a large scale. "We've been working a lot on harvesting energy from human activities. One way is to build something to put on people, and another way is to build something that has constant access to people. The ground is the most-used place," said Xudong Wang, Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison. The team's method published in the journal Nano Energy is the latest in a green energy...
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New Way To Make Electricity from Magnetism

Credit: Kipp van Schooten and Dali Sun, University of Utah By showing that a phenomenon dubbed the "inverse spin Hall effect" works in several organic semiconductors - including carbon-60 buckyballs - University of Utah physicists changed magnetic "spin current" into electric current. The efficiency of this new power conversion method isn't yet known, but it might find use in future electronic devices including batteries, solar cells and computers. "This paper is the first to demonstrate the inverse spin Hall effect in a range of organic semiconductors with unprecedented sensitivity," although a 2013 study by other researchers demonstrated it with less sensitivity in one such material, says Christoph Boehme, a senior author of the study published April 18 in the journal Nature Materials. The upper part of this illustration shows the device, built on a small glass slide, that was used in experiments showing that so-called spin current could be converted to electric current using several different organic polymer semiconductors and a phenomenon known as the inverse spin Hall effect. The bottom illustration shows the key, sandwich-like part of the device. An external magnetic field and pulses of microwaves create spin waves in the iron magnet. When those waves hit the polymer or organic semiconductor, they create spin current,...
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Cheaper, More Reliable Solar Power with New World Record for Polymer Solar Cells

Credit: Stefan Jerrevång/Linkoping university Polymer solar cells can be even cheaper and more reliable thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Linköping University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This work is about avoiding costly and unstable fullerenes. Polymer solar cells have in recent years emerged as a low cost alternative to silicon solar cells. In order to obtain high efficiency, fullerenes are usually required in polymer solar cells to separate charge carriers. However, fullerenes are unstable under illumination, and form large crystals at high temperatures. Polymer solar cells manufactured using low-cost roll-to-roll printing technology, demonstrated here by professors Olle Inganäs (right) and Shimelis Admassie. Now, a team of chemists led by Professor Jianhui Hou at the CAS set a new world record for fullerene-free polymer solar cells by developing a unique combination of a polymer called PBDB-T and a small molecule called ITIC. With this combination, the sun's energy is converted with an efficiency of 11%, a value that strikes most solar cells with fullerenes, and all without fullerenes. Feng Gao, together with his colleagues Olle Inganäs and Deping Qian at Linköping University, have characterized the loss spectroscopy of photovoltage (Voc), a key figure for solar cells, and proposed approaches...
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