While battery manufacturers and solar power companies are struggling to develop batteries that would be cheap, smaller in size, and can store power for days, an engineering college in Kolkata has devised a combo of solar-based generation and power storage system that can supply power perpetually 24 hours a day Read more
The Hon’ble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee has inaugurated the first phase of a solar power project in the President’s Estate that would generate 670 kW electricity for the sprawling premises. Under the project, seven rooftop solar panels have been installed with an investment of Rs. 2.23 crore on Read more
For the first time in the country, solar panels have been installed on an Indian warship. The survey class vessel INS Sarvekshak, attached with the southern naval command, has been fitted with 18 sheets of solar panels atop its hangar. “It took about six months to put the entire system Read more
The first real-life study to provide data on the potential of powering medical implants with solar cells has been done by some Swiss researchers. The notion of using solar cells placed under the skin to continuously recharge implanted electronic medical devices is a viable one. Swiss researchers have done the Read more
The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has captured the record for highest efficiency in solar hydrogen production via a photoelectrochemical (PEC) water-splitting process. The new solar-tohydrogen efficiency record is 16.2 per cent, topping a reported 14 per cent efficiency in 2015 by a team made up Read more
Solar cells based on perovskites reach high efficiencies as they convert more than 20 per cent of the incident light directly into usable power. On their search for underlying physical mechanisms, researchers of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now detected strips of nanostructures with alternating directions of polarization Read more
Helping India’s Climate Change Pledge I ndia is at a complex stage with respect to the energy scenario. The demand for energy is increasing rapidly. It is expected that India will contribute the maximum amount of addition to the energy requirement in the world in the next 25 years. On Read more
Naturally occurring pigment found in jamun as an inexpensive photosensitizer for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) or Gratzel cells have been used to create more efficient solar cells. Scientists at IIT Roorkee have used jamun fruit to create inexpensive and more efficient solar cells. Gratzel cells are thin-film solar cells composed Read more
The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre has developed an android app for computing the solar energy potential of a place. Developed at the behest of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the app is considered to be a ‘very useful’ tool for the installation of Read more
Recently, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India, had stressed to strengthen India’s manufacturing capabilities. For this MNRE released a concept note to upgrade country’s solar manufacturing supply chain. In this concept note, MNRE proposed to reduce dependency on foreign imports and create demands for local Read more