#Solar Energy

[reasonsforhope]

"India has reached a key milestone in renewable energy, with the country’s total renewable energy capacity exceeding 200 gigawatts as of Oct. 10, 2024, according to the Central Electricity Authority. The renewable energy-based electricity generation capacity now stands at 201.45 GW, accounting for 46.3% of the nation’s total installed capacity.

This milestone is the result of years of efforts to harness India’s natural resources. From solar parks to wind farms and hydroelectric projects, the country has built a diverse renewable energy base, reducing fossil fuel dependence and enhancing energy security.

India's total electricity generation capacity has reached 452.69 GW, with renewable energy contributing a significant portion of the overall power mix as the country continued to increase its dependence on cleaner, non-fossil fuel energy sources and push towards its sustainability goals.

When factoring in the 8,180 MW of nuclear capacity, the total non-fossil fuel-based power now accounts for almost half of the country's installed electricity generation capacity, signalling a strong move towards clean energy leadership on the global stage.

Renewable Energy

A variety of renewable energy resources contribute to this impressive figure. Solar power leads the way with 90.76 GW, playing a crucial role in India’s efforts to harness its abundant sunlight. Wind power follows closely with 47.36 GW, driven by the vast potential of the coastal and inland wind corridors across the country.

Hydroelectric power is another key contributor, with large hydro projects generating 46.92 GW and small hydropower adding 5.07 GW, offering a reliable and sustainable source of energy from India’s rivers and water systems.

Biopower, including biomass and biogas energy, adds another 11.32 GW to the renewable energy mix. These bioenergy projects are vital for utilising agricultural waste and other organic materials to generate power, further diversifying India’s clean energy sources. Together, these renewable resources are helping the country reduce its dependence on traditional fossil fuels while driving progress towards a more sustainable and resilient energy future.

Leading States In Renewable Energy Capacity

Several states in India have emerged as leaders in renewable energy capacity, making significant contributions to the nation's progress. These states are essential to advancing India’s renewable energy goals and fostering a sustainable energy future.

Rajasthan leads the pack with an impressive 29.98 GW of installed renewable energy capacity, capitalising on its extensive land and abundant sunlight.

Following closely is Gujarat, which boasts a capacity of 29.52 GW, driven by its strong focus on solar and wind energy projects. Tamil Nadu ranks third with 23.70 GW, leveraging its favourable wind patterns to generate substantial energy. While Karnataka rounds out the top four with a capacity of 22.37 GW, supported by a mix of solar and wind initiatives.

India's commitment to renewable energy is reflected in the annual electricity generation trends in recent years. The Government of India has introduced various measures and initiatives to promote and accelerate renewable energy capacity nationwide, aiming for an ambitious target of 500 GW of installed capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030."

-via NDTV, October 14, 2024

[liberalsarecool]

Solar energy has so many benefits. Raising salaries for teachers is such a needed narrative.

[politijohn]

Source

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[animentality]

[probablyasocialecologist]

Sheep living among rows of solar panels spend more time grazing, benefit from more nutritious food, rest more and appear to experience less heat stress, compared with nearby sheep in empty fields.

Earlier research suggested that agrivoltaic farms – which combine grazing animals with solar panels – offer more efficient renewable energy at lower overhead costs, as well as reducing wildfire risks. The latest findings show that the practice is also good for animal welfare, providing further evidence for a win-win situation, says Emma Kampherbeek, who carried out the work while at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

[...]

As for pasture quality, the nitrogen content was higher and carbon content lower in the solar panel fields, suggesting that the vegetation in this pasture – which was greener – was more nutritious and more easily digestible. That might be due to the reduced exposure to intense solar rays and to dew dripping off the panels, providing much-needed moisture, she says.

The results are likely to be even more pronounced in warmer seasons, she adds. Additional research is under way to analyse the data taken from temperature recordings during her study.

Sheep make good candidates for agrivoltaics because they are efficient foragers, keeping weeds off solar panels, and are small enough to pass under the panels, says Kampherbeek. And, unlike goats, they don’t chew the electrical wires.

The findings strongly suggest that solar power centres should be designed with a partner animal species in mind, she says.

[neolithicsheep]

Ok so you're looking at the aftermath of Helene and you're thinking "shit, how would I keep my phone charged? What about my neighbors?" and you have some outdoor space and some cash. Your friendly formerly off grid sheep farmer is here to help.

You need this set up right here:

To that you will need to add:

Y connectors:

The 100aH (amp Hour) deep cycle battery of your choice - lead acid AGM will be cheaper, lithium (LiFePo) is more expensive but lasts much longer.

Finally, you need a small pure sine wave inverter like this one: https://a.co/d/70vRd79

Plug the panels into the Y connectors then into the single wire to run to the charge controller. They are now connected in parallel. Take them outside to a sunny spot and face them south and prop them up at about a 45 degree angle. This isn't perfect but it will be good enough.

Connect your battery and charge controller. Connect the panels to the charge controller. All of the places to do this are labeled and all you need is a Phillips screwdriver. I recommend doing it once in a non-disaster situation so you know you can do it but you'll be fine. Boom, you are getting electricity from the sun!

The inverter draws power even when it's not running so don't leave it hooked up when you're not using it. When someone needs to charge their phone, put those alligator clips on the matching color battery posts, turn the inverter on, and plug in the phone/radio. Voilà! A single 100aH battery is not going to run a bunch of things but it will help keep cell phones charged without using up the gas in your car.

The panels are weatherproof but everything else needs to be protected by the way so you'll need to set this up in a shed or garage or in the house. Lead acid batteries can produce hydrogen gas when being charged but just having one isn't a big risk.

FAQ:

Yes, you can permanently mount the panels to your roof if you own your home etc. They're designed for that!

It is true that places sell "solar generators" - those are a charge controller, battery, and an inverter in one box at a very high price point. When a component goes bad you will be unable to replace the component and must replace the entire $1000 box. They are also not upgradeable or expandable, this is.

You do not have to buy Renogy, I recommend them because they kept me in electricity for the years I was off grid.

You do not have to buy the kit, you can buy the components of it as and when you can afford them!

Remember to keep your battery on a trickle charger.

[jangillman]

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - September 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!

1. A beam of hope for North America’s most endangered sparrow

“Dozens of conservationists, gathered some distance away to avoid spooking the skittish sparrows, celebrated the [release of the 1000th captive-raised sparrow] in an unprecedented recovery program that in only a few years has doubled the bird’s wild population, from a mere 80 five years ago to some 200 today. […] “What we have achieved is the best case scenario.””

2. U.S. overdose deaths plummet, saving thousands of lives

“"In the states that have the most rapid data collection systems, we’re seeing declines of twenty percent, thirty percent," said Dr. Nabarun Dasgupta, an expert on street drugs at the University of North Carolina. […] According to Donaldson, many people using fentanyl now carry naloxone, a medication that reverses most opioid overdoses. He said his friends also use street drugs with others nearby, ready to offer aid and support when overdoses occur.”

3. Propagated corals reveal increased resistance to bleaching across the Caribbean during the fatal heat wave of 2023

“”[… Y]oung corals bred for restoration are a lot more resistant to bleaching under extreme levels of heat stress than the prevailing corals on the reef." [… Unlike with the previous propagation strategy, fragmentation, e]very time a population reproduces, new offspring receive newly mixed sets of genes through recombination, making them different from their parent colonies and thus enabling adaptation.”

4. Habitat Management Helps At-Risk Butterflies

“For a number of at-risk butterflies in the United States, habitat management can play an important role in keeping them from going extinct. [… “In] places where people are actively engaged with ways to manage the habitat, the butterflies are doing the best,” said Cheryl Schultz, a professor of conservation biology at Washington State University[….]”

5. Study: Protecting the ocean helps fight malnutrition

“[The study] found that fish catches in coral reefs could increase by up to 20 percent by expanding sustainable-use marine protected areas — that is, areas where some fishing is allowed with restrictions[, … and] that sustainable-use marine protected areas have on average 15 percent more fish biomass than non-protected areas. […] “Allowing regulated fishing in marine protected areas can support healthy fish populations, while also having a positive impact on the quality of life of surrounding communities.””

6. [FWS] Advances Effort to Create Urban Conservation Footprint in Tucson

““We want to continue to work together to create an urban footprint to improve access to nature, conserve habitats, and improve air and water quality.” […] The area provides habitat for several federally listed species, including southwestern willow flycatcher, western yellow-billed cuckoo, and Mexican garter snake. If protected, the area will also help connect critical habitat for jaguar and Chiracahua leopard frog.”

7. ‘Exciting’ solar breakthrough means energy can be kept in sustainable batteries that don’t overheat

“The technology is based on a specially designed molecule of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that changes shape when it comes into contact with sunlight. These are common elements - providing an alternative to other technologies relying on scarce materials like lithium. […] A unique feature of the system is that the molecules also provide cooling in the photovoltaic cell[, which can store solar energy “for up to 18 years.”]”

8. Sea turtles make big comeback on sandy beaches at 2 British military bases in Cyprus

“[… The] number of nests surpass[ed] last year’s record count by nearly 25%, environmentalists said Tuesday. […] “The steep increase in turtle nests has been the result of a consistent, systematic ‘hands-off’ approach, together with enforcement efforts to minimize illegal, damaging activities on nesting beaches[….” D]aily patrols by volunteers ensure that aluminum cages set atop the nests remain in place to protect the turtles from predators like foxes and dogs.”

9. First ever photograph of rare bird species New Britain Goshawk

“The last documented scientific record of the bird is from 1969[….] Working closely with [“the Indigenous Mengen and Mamusi peoples”], WWF hopes to support local stewardship to safeguard the future of these incredible biodiversity hotspots through community-led conservation.”

10. Hospitals begin offering breakthrough radiation therapy for metastatic cancer tumors

“[First,] a patient is injected with a radioactive glucose (or sugar) tracer. The machine picks up the tracer in real time and in bright colors, [… then] reads a signal from the cancer cells breaking down the tracer. [… “The] machine is automatically and autonomously reacting and responding to those signals by shooting radiation back to their source[….]””

September 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[you-need-not-apply]

“Stop making me feel guilty about the environment!!”

Oh but I want you to feel guilty.

I want you to feel guilty after you redo your kitchen for the third time in five years but still “can’t afford” to get solar panels

I want you to feel guilty that you just brought a new 80-100k car that runs only on gas/petrol. It’s not even a hybrid

I want you to feel guilty for using the 10 cent plastic bags at the grocery store instead of shelling out 2-7$ once for a reusable one

I want you to feel guilty.

[reasonsforhope]

"It is 70 years since AT&T’s Bell Labs unveiled a new technology for turning sunlight into power. The phone company hoped it could replace the batteries that run equipment in out-of-the-way places. It also realised that powering devices with light alone showed how science could make the future seem wonderful; hence a press event at which sunshine kept a toy Ferris wheel spinning round and round.

Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.

To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.

Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.

To grasp that this is not some environmentalist fever dream, consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel.

As our essay this week explains, solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. Making cells also takes energy, but solar power is fast making that abundant, too. As for demand, it is both huge and elastic—if you make electricity cheaper, people will find uses for it. The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.

Other constraints do exist. Given people’s proclivity for living outside daylight hours, solar power needs to be complemented with storage and supplemented by other technologies. Heavy industry and aviation and freight have been hard to electrify. Fortunately, these problems may be solved as batteries and fuels created by electrolysis gradually become cheaper...

The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything. Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.

But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.

This week marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where nobody need go without the blessings of electricity and where the access to energy invigorates all those it touches."

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024

[thesorceresstemple]

[lily0819]

In its report entitled Strategies for Affordable and Fair Clean Energy Transitions, the IEA said that more investment would be needed if the world was to achieve the 2050 net-zero emissions target. The operating costs of the global energy system are expected to be cut by more than half over the next decade compared to a transition trajectory based on today's policy settings, with the end result being an affordable and fairer energy system for consumers.

[reality-detective]

In some villages in Asia, people use the sun's energy to boil water.

A special apparatus angles the sun's rays directly into the kettle, which then causes it to heat water. 🤔

[probablyasocialecologist]

The United States solar energy boom is finally taking off - in the worst way. In the Mojave desert and other federal lands across the West, utility-scale installations are putting gigawatt-hours of energy on the board and powering millions of homes. But the designs are sloppy, the labor conditions are horrific, and the environmental damage is incalculable. Ancient joshua trees are being clear cut, endangered desert tortoises are being left for dead, the vast biotic carbon stores of Mojave soils are being upturned, and the reflectivity of enormous expanses of desert are being altered, affecting the planetary climate. ​But it doesn't have to be this way. There's a type of energy that requires no fuel and no land. It hardly even needs transmission lines, as it can be built at the site of use: rooftop solar. Every hour of the day, rooftops across the United States soak up enough sun to generate petawatts of power. Estimates for their potential to offset US energy demand range from 13 percent to over 100. Yet at present, only around 2 percent of US energy is generated by rooftop. ​And then there's land area that's already been developed. Just by building solar on degraded lands, focusing on superfund sites, reservoirs, and farmland, researchers estimate we could generate more than enough to offset today's national energy demand. While there are points of dispute concerning some projections, the conclusion is clear: between the potential of degraded lands, rooftops, wind, and storage - plus existing hydro, nuclear, and other zero carbon energy sources, there's really no need to tear up the rare and fragile ecosystems of our deserts.

[keepingitneutral]

Alarine Earth Home, Koshi, India,

Zarine Jamshedji Architects Conceived in collaboration with builder Cornelis Alan Beuke

Photo Credit: Syam Sreesylam