Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

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hgupta
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by hgupta »

Mort Walker wrote: Rooftop solar has lots of potential in India where people live in their houses for generations. In the US, people move quite frequently and investing in solar panels is questionable for home use where you may not be able to recover the initial cost.
In the US, once people buy houses, they generally do not move around that often since they do not want to lose the tax exemptions that come with it and cannot recover their costs of buying their house and the cost of selling their house until their house appreciates at least 25% That will not happen till 7 to ten years later. BY then, most people tend to stay until they have a different job or some event that necessitates the moving. People that move around that often tend to rent, not buy.

On a personal note, I made sure of that I would stay in the house that I currently have for a long time. Once I made sure of that, getting solar was a no-brainer. I am waiting for the price of the battery to drop more so I can completely wean myself off from the grid for as long as I can. Right now, through net metering, I am still relying on the grid to provide with just under 20% of my electricity needs. Getting a 100kwh slow charging stable energy storage combined with a rapid charging/discharging 20kwh batter would be a couple years away as the cost of getting that system is around $50k ~$60k. It only makes economically sense if that system comes down to $10k which translates to needing the cost of energy storage to come down to $20/kwh. Right now Tesla has gotten the battery costs down to $100/kwh but it doesn't mean that we, as the consumers, will buy the batteries at $100/kwh. The way Tesla price the Powerwall2s and installation costs, we are effectively paying $570/kwh which translates to 5.5 ~5.7 times the actual cost of the battery. That means the actual cost of manufacturing the battery needs to come down to $20/kwh.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

introduction to sustainable energy (MIT OCW Course)

I am going through the parts I am interested in - Energy from Biomass. A large number of other energy sources are considered, including fossil fuels, Photovoltaics, Wind Energy, Geothermal. Scientific, Technical, Regulatary, and Economic dimensions are discussed.

FYI
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by nachiket »

Mort Walker wrote:
Vayutuvan wrote:https://heetma.org/2015/04/09/embodied- ... ic-panels/

This gives some hope for Electricity generation from Solar panels from the embodied energy perspective.

Rooftop solar has lots of potential in India where people live in their houses for generations. In the US, people move quite frequently and investing in solar panels is questionable for home use where you may not be able to recover the initial cost.

In the mean time, split atoms not wood.
Rooftop solar potential in India is confined to rural and semi-urban areas only, where people still live in individual houses. The income levels in these areas are low enough to make large scale adoption of rooftop solar a distant dream. In large cities where people might actually have the money for it, they live in ever-taller multi-storey apartment buildings where rooftop solar is not feasible.

GOI's decision to go in for large scale grid-connected solar parks is the correct one. Similar to what we see in other developing nations with high population density.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

sudarshan wrote:And there's the difference. I don't feel that the alarmists (you used the word) are right.
I used the 'alrmists' sobriquet because I also think that they are driven by emotional irrationality. As per my three step plan, they are no hard boundaries - only that the mix of energy sources go from coal-heavy to nuclear/biogas to biogas/solar/wind/geothermal/hydro.

Hydropower will be fought tooth and nail by Ms. Medha Patkar/Ms. Arundhati Roy types, Nuclear by P. Sainath and a few retired/resigned IAS folks for reasons only known to them.

Biogas, I am sure, will have its detractors. There is some resistance at present, but we don't hear much from these folks since Biogas production is minuscule at present. See below what is happening in NE of the US.

They are stopping NG pipelines. The end result is that the power generation operators are falling back to Coal to keep the generators going.

activists-demand-to-close-coal-plant
Throughout the Northeast, activists have held up natural gas pipeline construction projects, either by protesting or by persuading state or local government officials to deny permits or create other legal hurdles.

'New Hampshire's natural gas-fired generation has declined in the past three years and now is at its lowest level since 2002', the EIA concluded. The decrease has been compensated for primarily by increases in coal-fired generation and hydroelectric power.

Merrimack Station could convert to cleaner-burning natural gas. But no pipeline runs to the plant.

'There is no plan to convert the plants to natural gas because there is no supply line nearby,' the New Hampshire Union Leader reported in January.

Activists have been so successful in blocking new natural gas pipeline construction that they've guaranteed the continued operation of the very coal-fired power plant they now demand (to) be shut down.
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 01 Oct 2019 05:16, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by ashbhee »

Tata Power Co., received an order to build a 105 megawatt-peak floating solar plant in Kerala.Source: Bloomberg

Does Tata power manufacture Solar cells / PV panels or do they just import from China and assemble them?
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

capcost_assumption (PDF)

It has lots of cost details as well as location based adjustments across all the 50 US states. Various technologies are included in the full report. It is a 2013 study released in 2016. Things might have changed but this can be taken as a baseline.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

replacing-coal-with-wind-and-solar-power - blog by Dr. Ripudaman Malhotra

Why it is not feasible to do the replacement, at least not as quickly as the 'alarmists' want.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

From the above blog, he makes a case for nuclear power followed by wind followed by Biomass followed by Solar.

Image
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Well, biomass has a large negative, from the point of view of the AGW crowd. Methane is dozens of times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So even a small leak from source to consumption point will add to the greenhouse trapping. Small as in - 4%. Leaks have to be kept below that level, to satisfy the AGW crowd.

While I don't believe that the climate is changing drastically due to man-made CO2 emissions, I do think it's a bad idea to leak methane into the atmosphere. Although - swamps do it all the time. So does the Bermuda triangle, if one goes by the gas-hydrate-leak theory (which explains why planes and ships plummet towards the sea-floor in that area). So do cows. I'm basically conflicted on this, don't know enough about the effects of methane in the atmosphere (actually, I know nothing, and I suspect even the "experts" are like me in this).

Anyways, from the point of view of emissions, biogas is pretty clean. On the strength of that, converting coal plants to biogas might be a good idea. With co-generation/ combined cycle power plants, it could be an attractive proposition.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

Sudarshan ji, what would be useful is to make report similar to the one I linked to above

(This one done for the US by an US agency - capcost_assumption (PDF))

for India. It would make a nice MA Econometrics or MBA final project. If some modeling, forecasting, and optimization is included, then it might even be good for a PhD in Econometrics/Energy/Management Sciences. Additionally it will be of great practical use for people who are investing in small alternate energy installations in India.

I am sure there are several professors from India who are looking at BRF. Please do find money and/or apply for grants to GoI.

FWIW.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Vayutuvan »

sudarshan wrote:Well, biomass has a large negative, from the point of view of the AGW crowd.
If some of the cuckoo extremal AGW folks drive the narrative and the policy, we will have no development whatsoever.

They are such an unmitigated disaster that they should be called out each and every time they raise their voice/head. No two ways about it, in my mind at least.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

There seems to be some demand:

Maruti sells 2 lakh BS-VI vehicles in 6 months.

2 lakh vehicles in 6 months is like 1/8th of the peak demand two years ago. So a hopeful sign.

And the NCR seems to be on-board with BS-VI fuel:

BS-VI fuel available across NCR already.

Delhi has been on-board for a year and a half, now the entire NCR is on-board. And Javadekar maintains that the fuel will be available country-wide by April 1st next year:

BS-VI fuel will be available country-wide from April 1st.

It's not just cars, two-wheelers too:

BS-VI compliant scooter from Honda.

With fuel injection of course, I don't think a two-stroke engine with carburetion can be made BS-VI compliant.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

About the capcost report - yes, that kind of research would be useful in India, but not sure if there's any such thing going on. Now would be the right time for GOI to make funds available for that kind of thing (if it isn't already).

I agree about the extreme "climate change" views, I'm trying to keep the thread clear of any discussion on that. It tends to get acrimonious pretty fast :).
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indi ... SKBN1WG43W

India shelves plan to impose countrywide ban on single-use plastics. Seems to be a considered decision, not to disrupt the industrial sector further.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Delhi recent smog

This is getting horrible :( . Anybody from Delhi, how bad was it, really?
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Katare »

sudarshan wrote:Well, biomass has a large negative, from the point of view of the AGW crowd. Methane is dozens of times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. So even a small leak from source to consumption point will add to the greenhouse trapping. Small as in - 4%. Leaks have to be kept below that level, to satisfy the AGW crowd.

While I don't believe that the climate is changing drastically due to man-made CO2 emissions, I do think it's a bad idea to leak methane into the atmosphere. Although - swamps do it all the time. So does the Bermuda triangle, if one goes by the gas-hydrate-leak theory (which explains why planes and ships plummet towards the sea-floor in that area). So do cows. I'm basically conflicted on this, don't know enough about the effects of methane in the atmosphere (actually, I know nothing, and I suspect even the "experts" are like me in this).

Anyways, from the point of view of emissions, biogas is pretty clean. On the strength of that, converting coal plants to biogas might be a good idea. With co-generation/ combined cycle power plants, it could be an attractive proposition.
The argument doesn’t apply to biomass, because all of the biomass will get converted into methane and other compounds naturally by bacteria. Converting it artificially and burning byproducts is actually highly beneficial to environment.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Katare wrote: The argument doesn’t apply to biomass, because all of the biomass will get converted into methane and other compounds naturally by bacteria. Converting it artificially and burning byproducts is actually highly beneficial to environment.
I might have confused natural gas with biomass maybe? I think you're right, if you're talking of decaying biological matter. That would make sense - burning it up into CO2 and H2O. But again, if the AGW crowd sees "CO2," they're likely to have a fit.

Looks like even BS-VI will make only a small difference as far as Delhi/N. India is concerned:

We told you so - It's not Diwali
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Katare »

I just wonder why there is such a lack of clarity ( or smog, pun intended) on where Delhi’s pollution comes from.

Shri Gadkari claimed 70% of it will go away with his peripheral bypass highways. Since they were completed, several reports of all kind put the pollution reduction at north of 25% at least. Even with 25% reduction this year’s winter pollution should have been lower than historic level its hitting now.

No one can figure out if the odd even makes any difference although nothing is better than odd even to drag spoiled dilliwallahs on burning coals of largely their own making by their own beloved ati-clean and maha-honest CM.

The stubble burning is again strange because CMs of Punjab and Haryana always point to largely clear skies in their states where stubble is being burned (besides on other-side of the boarder too) as compared to Delhi. One of the main reason for pollution is given to be low to no winds, so how come the stubble soot flys hundreds of mile into Delhi but than they can’t fly out, making land of delhi as pollution blackhole?

The facts are pollution peaks every year during winter so it had to be time related. - winter low wind and dry cold air. stubble burning and Delhi’s own pollution (from industry, transport and construction) becomes too much for natural diffusion mechanism to handle during winter months.

Delhi has largest, fastest and fully electric suburban railway, widest road in highest density with bypasses and flyovers. low pollution gas based public transport, private gas vehicles piped gas at home and now electric push! What else can you do?

I think there are hidden pollution sources protected by powerful vote banks.

Last but not least the whole north indian belt running from Bihar, UP, Punjab all the way to pakistan gets dry and cold so it’ll suffer during winters Unless we move to hunter gatherer societies in entire area. The point is we need to moderate our expectations within Indian context and reality.

And the lastest point - are we focusing on one aspect of pollution only? Have we hung up on the 2.5 micron particles density and nothing else really matters in my hole?
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Katare wrote: The stubble burning is again strange because CMs of Punjab and Haryana always point to largely clear skies in their states where stubble is being burned (besides on other-side of the boarder too) as compared to Delhi. One of the main reason for pollution is given to be low to no winds, so how come the stubble soot flys hundreds of mile into Delhi but than they can’t fly out, making land of delhi as pollution blackhole?
Wind is a many-layered thing (like love being a many-splendored thing). It's possible for the pollution to rise (being hot and less dense), reach a windy layer of the atmosphere, travel, then cool and descend. So those CMs might just be being too clever by half.
Delhi has largest, fastest and fully electric suburban railway, widest road in highest density with bypasses and flyovers. low pollution gas based public transport, private gas vehicles piped gas at home and now electric push! What else can you do?

I think there are hidden pollution sources protected by powerful vote banks.

Last but not least the whole north indian belt running from Bihar, UP, Punjab all the way to pakistan gets dry and cold so it’ll suffer during winters Unless we move to hunter gatherer societies in entire area. The point is we need to moderate our expectations within Indian context and reality.
Yep, that's baffling, though I do believe that the stubble burning is a relatively large part of the problem. If that's also stopped and the pollution doesn't improve, then I'm out of ideas. Or maybe your idea of hidden pollution sources is right. Southern India doesn't have as big a problem, so it's the wind. Can't do anything about the wind in Delhi (barring obvious jokes about politicians and hot air), so the only option is to clamp down on the source of pollution.
And the lastest point - are we focusing on one aspect of pollution only? Have we hung up on the 2.5 micron particles density and nothing else really matters in my hole?
It's the most visible, and also one of the most dangerous. When that particular number is like a dozen times or more above the danger limit, it's going to be the most visible face of the problem. I think the good news is that the reduction measures are the same for most of the pollutants, so addressing one should make big dents on the rest of the pollution issues as well.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by UlanBatori »

Have you guys seen the controversy where a Cornell prof, and India's own Shekhar "Agra Poodle" Gupta, stand accused of blatant plagiarism for stealing Arvind Kumar's brilliant article connecting Delhi pollution to Monsanto GM and desi public policy?
From: Arvind Kumar <arvind.kumar@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 10:42 AM
To: Kristin A. Davis <kab264@cornell.edu>; Office of the President <president@cornell.edu>
Subject: Plagiarism from my work by Cornell Professor

I would like to bring to your attention a case of plagiarism by one of your faculty members and I would like a swift resolution as we are in the age of internet and every moment contributes to multiplying and amplifying the false information your university has put out.

The core ideas in the paper by Andrew McDonald that was published in Nature Sustainability on the cause of Delhi air pollution has been stolen from my mainstream newspaper articles without any attribution to me. These articles were not buried in obscurity. They were in a mainstream newspaper, went viral, were republished on other websites including a popular website that focuses on ecology, have resulted in me being invited to TV panel discussions, resulted in Monsanto protesting my article, and in a NASA Scientist cited by McDonald tweeting it.

From Cornell University's press release reported in Science Daily:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 125338.htm

"A new study reveals how water-use policies require farmers to transplant rice later in the year, which in turn delays harvests and concentrates agricultural burnings of crop residues in November -- a month when breezes stagnate -- leading to increased air pollution."

This is an unfair claim because that was exactly the content of my detailed article published in Sunday Guardian in 2017, 1.5 years before the publication of McDonald's paper.
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/12191-law-aiding-monsanto-reason-delhi-s-annual-smoke-season

My investigative journalism which uncovered the real reason for the smoke in Delhi is now being passed off as the result of scientific investigation by your professor. This is blatantly dishonest and unfair to me. It was also NOT a piece of independent research as such "researchers" are wont to claim. It was mine and mine alone. In fact, a NASA scientist, Dr. Hiren Jethva, who works on pollution and has been cited in McDonald's paper tweeted my article with the comment that he now understands why satellites detect more fires over Punjab only post-2009.

I also published a follow up article in 2018 after communicating with the NASA scientist which strengthened my theory.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opin ... moke-delhi

Had this scientist cited me in a paper instead of a tweet, you would have instantly considered McDonald's work to be plagiarism. The tweet too should be considered a citation in my favor and considered like any other paper.

I am the one who postulated that the change in direction of wind resulted in the smoke accumulating over the Delhi Metropolitan area, and I am the one who put in effort to study the wind patterns and confirm my suspicions. Likewise, I am the one who uncovered the fact that the reasons for the delay in planting rice were some laws in two Indian states in my original article.

To put it in simple terms, the key vision and hypothesis for McDonald's paper has been plagiarized from me.

What he has done is to gather more data to corroborate my theory. The theory is mine, not his. He merely provided supporting analysis for my theory and that is the correct way to describe it.

I suggest you fix this by attributing the key idea to me since all that McDonald did was to corroborate with some data analysis what I had already found out and published. A letter to Nature Sustainability in a prominent position that I was the inspiration for his study would be in order since I was the one who first not only connected the dots but imagined the dots and dug them out. Such a letter should not be placed behind any paywall.

Similarly, I think it is only fair that Cornell University issues a press release crediting me with the idea that he has claimed as his own and stating that the idea for the study was inspired by my articles in the major newspaper Sunday Guardian.

I hope you know that the "perfect storm" he mentions scenario requires a different kind of insight and imagination, and apart from having this unique insight, I also put in tremendous amount of effort studying the wind patterns and digging out the history of policy changes which until then had crossed no one else's mind.

If you wish to speak with me, I can be reached on my cell phone at



-Arvind
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

^ Yay for Cornell, and why aren't I surprised :).

I like the guy's non-compromising and no-nonsense tone in his letter. Wish him all the best in bringing the crook(s) to book. How does one sue a university, and does it have to be in a US court or an Indian one?

The guy's hypothesis is fascinating (about tracing the rise in pollution in Delhi to a change in govt. policy, which in turn was dictated by the profiteering of Monsanto). Will need to read up more on it.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Katare »

This guy Arvind is full of himself and other foul substances, don’t even bother his half assed arguments.

Everyone that has kept a cursory tab on Delhi pollution knows the impact of delay forced by state water conservation law on Delhi but it is also appreciated by and large that the water conservation scheme is working and no one is disputing it on merit.

This genius proclaims that there is some evidence that rice fields can even help increase water tables and they don’t loose much water so what is being done in Punjab/Haryana is a conspiracy by Cornell and Monsanto.

First thing, the evidence that he is referring related to rice fields are probably correct and no one as such disagrees with them. The Punjab law was not enacted because of the reason he is referring . The law requires farmers to wait until mansoon start for paddy planting so they won’t be using free electricity to pump out water to start sowing early. If they had to pay for the power bill they will all either wait 6 weeks or move to other less water/power intensive crops. This is a distortion created by shallow vote bank policies.

Next if you fill up the typical rice field bund with 12” of water by drawig it from the ground just before mansoon then When it rains in a few weeks where would the rain water go? Remember Rice fields are extremely slow draining and needs to maintain several inch-of water throughout the growing season.

Traditionally paddy was always planted everywhere in India after mansoon rains, only free electricity and ample free water supply (canals) distorted it recently and a law brought out restored it to the original. Now the state govt saves on farm power subsidies, massive amount of ground water is not pumped out just before monsoon ( the driest time) and the paddy fields now capture rain and may even recharge the ground water.

Growing paddy in punjab which is the largest surplus crop not only in north but entire India, is nothing but mass insanity. Not only free electricity and subsidized fertilizers, GoI then had to buy all of it at a non market fixed rate, store it and than In turn give it for free to poor and dump the rest of the surplus into export markets at subsidized rates.

So what are the two recent solutions ——more subsidies
1) Rs1000/ton for not burning the stubble+collection and disposal of it- Asked by Punjab/Haryana govt and ordered by SC meloards last week
2) pay farmers who do not fully use their quota of free electricity on average/acre basis. Hope here is that since farmer can cash in his free electricity so he may choose to grow something else instead.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Katare wrote:...
OK you might have saved me the need to go read up on that, but I hope you don't mind if I go do some research to verify that you are on the up and up :). (J/K).

So the Arvind guy is right in saying that the problem is because of a shift of the sowing season, but his attribution of the reason for this (he says it was to please Monsanto) is wrong. Did I get that right?

In any case, I hope he does take Cornell down a notch.

But to get back to the issue of Delhi. It is certainly very puzzling that the city seems to be taking so many steps, including being a couple of years away from having a fully solar-powered metro (the world's first), and is still seeing rising pollution levels.

I don't think Beijing (unlike Delhi) has a problem of being cocooned just below towering mountains, so maybe they didn't have such a hard time reducing their pollution:

How China cut its air pollution

They seem to have had some dramatic gains. Of course the govt. there mandated closure of coal-fired plants, and basically told citizens that they couldn't use coal-fired heaters in the winter anymore (caused a lot of suffering obviously). But they also seem to have made an effort to provide alternative heating sources, and apparently the citizens are happier (depends on how much you are willing to trust news from China, I guess). However, I can certainly believe that their govt. took a strong stance, outlawing and mandating left and right - that will have its own effect. Plus their big electric bus push.

The NCR already has BS-VI fuel. The vehicles are still BS-IV. Burning BS-VI fuel in a BS-IV vehicle will still reduce pollution quite a bit, though the big gains will come from the diesel particle filters which will not be available in existing BS-IV vehicles. We'll have to wait till next year for that.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Katare »

Simply amazing what Communist can achieve with a firm hand
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by vishvak »

Delhi HC asks goi for pushing research in fuel cell. Just read a headline somewhere.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Kaivalya »

https://m.economictimes.com/small-biz/s ... 081608.cms

Seems like significantly better in terms of energy consumption. Maybe policy push (like that of led) can help better rates of adoption and more importantly awareness for more innovation

Request to move to where it is appropriate if this is not a good thread
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by vijayk »

Katare wrote:Simply amazing what Communist can achieve with a firm hand
china is not communist. just totalitarian and nationalistic

our commies are dumb and stupid
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Gerard »

Seasons of Indian Air Quality
The skies over the Indo-Gangetic Plain—a river valley that includes parts of Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh—are among the haziest in the world. Those four countries regularly come in near the bottom of annual rankings for air quality. In 2014, the World Health Organization listed Delhi as the city with the most polluted air in the world.

However, such rankings do not properly reflect the complexity and variability of the region’s air, said Hiren Jethva, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Air pollution is a real and growing concern over certain cities, but too often people generalize and assume the entire region is constantly blanketed by thick, gray industrial pollution.”

Indeed, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is remarkable for how much air quality varies throughout the year. This set of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite helps illustrate the range of factors—some natural, some not—that contribute to the variation.

The main types of airborne particles, or aerosols, that affect visibility over the Indo-Gangetic Plain are dust, organic carbon, black carbon, sulfates, and nitrates. Sand storms in the Thar Desert loft most of the dust. Agricultural fires in the western part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and forest fires in the eastern part produce significant amounts of organic carbon; so do the many wood stoves and cooking stoves throughout the region. Millions of automobiles, power plants, incinerators, smelters, and other industrial sites in urban areas are prolific producers of sulfates, nitrates, and black carbon.

The abundance and proportion of these aerosols vary throughout the year. Spring brings the clearest skies of the year. When MODIS captured the top image on March 9, 2010, skies were clear enough to pick out cities such as New Delhi amidst the green background of farms. As spring progresses, dust increasingly fills the air and comes to dominate by mid summer. The second image shows just such a dust storm obscuring most land features in April 2010.

After the rains of the summer monsoon clear the dust, the composition of the air shifts in the fall crop-burning season (October and November) for farmers, particularly in the northwestern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. When MODIS passed over on November 4, 2010, the sensor observed numerous small fires and a large smoke plume lingering downwind.

“In the fall, we start to see a decrease in coarse dust particles and a real jump in the abundance of the finer particles that predominate in smoke and industrial pollution,” said Ritesh Gautam, an aerosol specialist at the Indian Institute of Technology.

The cool months of December and January are best known for producing thick fogs and aerosols hazes. Cooking and heating stoves in rural areas add smoke; so do a smattering of agricultural fires that continue through the winter. Urban areas contribute nitrates and sulfates that come from vehicles, coal-fired power plants, and other industrial sources.

As seen by MODIS image on December 26, 2010, most overnight fog burns off in the morning but leaves some patches of fog amidst an aerosol haze. These fog and aerosol hazes likely amplify each other. On one hand, aerosol particles serve as “seeds” that make it easier for fog and clouds to form. On the other, fog droplets accelerate the conversion of gaseous pollutants into haze-causing aerosols. Damp conditions also amplify haze because high humidity increases the size of many aerosols, making them more likely to block light.

“The other piece to keep in mind if you want to understand why this part of the world has such a problem with air quality is its unique geography,” said Gautam. “Air masses get hemmed in by the Himalayan mountains in the north and the Vindhya mountains in the south. When temperature inversions occur, all the smoke, dust, and industrial pollution entering the atmosphere ends up piling up over the Indo-Gangetic plain because it can not get over the mountains.”
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Fast battery charging for buses

Nobody get in the way of that TOSA, or you're TOASt.

For better or worse, India seems to be going the battery way. What is that "fast charging?" It used to be that such a practice would shred the battery. Now they're talking of doing topping recharges in seconds, at high power levels. 600 kW for a second is 1/6 kWH. So six seconds would be a kWH of energy, popularly known as a "unit" of electricity.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Mort Walker »

sudarshan wrote:Fast battery charging for buses

Nobody get in the way of that TOSA, or you're TOASt.

For better or worse, India seems to be going the battery way. What is that "fast charging?" It used to be that such a practice would shred the battery. Now they're talking of doing topping recharges in seconds, at high power levels. 600 kW for a second is 1/6 kWH. So six seconds would be a kWH of energy, popularly known as a "unit" of electricity.
At selected passenger stops, its system connects the bus to the charging infrastructure, and in a mere 15 seconds the batteries are charged with a 600-kilowatt power boost. An additional few minutes charge at the final terminal enables a full recharge without interrupting the bus schedule.
That is 600,000 Watts in 15 seconds, which is 40,000 Amps. In one hour, the energy coming from that charging point will be = 144 MW-HR or 144,000 units. To put this in perspective:

Charging energy = 144 MJoules in hour = 36 Kg of TNT released in one hour.

TBH, this seems rather difficult to implement given power infrastructure anywhere in the world. I'll wait to see it happen because I seriously doubt it can be done on the scale it needs to make any significant pollution difference. The economics of setting up the infrastructure will be very very costly.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Mort Walker wrote: That is 600,000 Watts in 15 seconds, which is 40,000 Amps. In one hour, the energy coming from that charging point will be = 144 MW-HR or 144,000 units. To put this in perspective:

Charging energy = 144 MJoules in hour = 36 Kg of TNT released in one hour.

TBH, this seems rather difficult to implement given power infrastructure anywhere in the world. I'll wait to see it happen because I seriously doubt it can be done on the scale it needs to make any significant pollution difference. The economics of setting up the infrastructure will be very very costly.
Are you dividing 600,000 watts by 15 seconds to get 40,000 amps? That's what it seemed like to me, maybe I didn't get what you were doing there.

Just to clarify (again, not sure how you got 40,000 amps above):

Watts=volts*amps

So you can't divide watts by seconds and get amps. If the voltage level was 15 volts, then you would have to draw 40 kA current to get 600 kW. But I suspect the voltage level is much higher than that, 40 kA is a massive current.

Watts is already power, so you multiply power by time to get energy. So 600,000 watts for 15 seconds is 9 million joules. 600 kW for an hour is 2,160,000,000 Joules (600,000 J/s * 3600 seconds), or 2.16 GigaJoules in 1 hour (not 144 MJoules).

A lot more than 36 kg TNT :).

I think they are talking about doing topping charges every few bus stops. Same as sending a water truck to supply a busy locality, only, every few houses, the water truck can refill itself from some convenient source, at a very high flow rate (so it only takes a few seconds to refill).

In effect, the battery is subjected to very shallow discharges, and then immediately topped up. Actually, a better analogy would be using a laptop, recharging as soon as the battery charge drops below 95%, which makes for very frequent recharges, and also never lets the battery charge level come down significantly. In contrast, deep discharge would be - when you let the battery charge level drop to, say, 10% or 5% before recharging. Laptop batteries are supposed to be deep discharged, they have longer life that way. Not sure about how that works out with a big bus battery.

The total energy supplied at each charge is relatively small, but it is replenished very fast (in a few seconds), hence the high power level.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Mort Walker »

Sorry, you’re right.

600,000 W/15s = 40,000 J/s = 40 KW
In one hour: 40 * 3600 = 144 KWHr energy

For 40KW power at 208VAC, current = 192 Amps. Then that has to inverted to DC which will result in some loss.

It is doable, but still the infrastructure has to be in place. That has to happen if EVs are of consequence. I didn’t see what size battery those busses have.

Maybe a fuel cell battery that uses CNG would be better.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Mort, just take a deep breath :). 600,000 W is 600 kW, which is already in kW. You are dividing it by time again (15 s), and getting 40 kW :).

You need to be multiplying it by time, to get energy.

600 kW at ~200 V is 3 kAmps of current. I don't know how that TOSA technology works, but if I were to take a guess - I don't think it is going to draw 3 kA from the grid. For one thing, the voltage would probably be stepped up a lot (that would reduce the current at the output side, but at the input side, that would still need 3 kA current input to the transformer). But more importantly - I think the technology would draw low current levels from the power grid and store it in some fashion, maybe even a battery again. Then pulse that energy to the bus battery over a very short time interval, to achieve that huge 600 kW power pulse (but not such a high current, voltage would be stepped up).

EDIT: After I wrote up the above, I got the brilliant idea of looking up TOSA online, so I did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSA_(bus)

I think I got the basic concept right, it has some kind of energy storage, draws relatively low current from the grid, and then pulses the required power to the battery to be charged. Kind of like a toilet flush - it collects water at low flow rate from the supply and stores it in a tank, then when you hit the lever, it dumps all that water very fast.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Mort Walker »

sudharshan,

Yes, the energy is 144 KWHr = 518.4 MJ. The peak charging capability is 600 KW in 15 sec = 40 KW. This is doable. The Tesla superchargers claim a peak capacity of 250 KW, but I don't know the time duration they can maintain. Tesla doesn't publish useful details.

What you're thinking of is a super capacitor or battery which can discharge very quickly. That has its own problems from a safety point of view. Maybe even worse than a fellow smoking a cigarette at a petrol pump.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Gyan »

India is lucky to have mild climate & short distance for Bus to travel. A city bus needs to do around 200-400km a day. Which can be managed by a single overnight charge.

Inter City Bus needs to do around 400-800 a day, with 3-4 one hour stops, which are adequate for full charging by a Super Charger

The problem is more difficult for cold nations with longer distances to travel like USA, Canada, or Even China.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by sudarshan »

Mort Walker wrote:The peak charging capability is 600 KW in 15 sec = 40 KW.
Mort ji, does the above sentence seem right to you? It makes no sense at all.
Mort Walker wrote:600,000 W/15s = 40,000 J/s = 40 KW
In one hour: 40 * 3600 = 144 KWHr energy
I mean no offence, but the above calculation is wrong in many ways and at many levels. The most important point is that you are dividing watts by seconds and ending up with watts again! And that number of 144 kWHr is pretty meaningless. May I ask if you really understand these units?
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by vishvak »

Inter City Bus ..
That solutions could come in time, too. Like charging it (efficiently) near stations by providing 'charging line' while it travels.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Mort Walker »

sudarshan wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:The peak charging capability is 600 KW in 15 sec = 40 KW.
Mort ji, does the above sentence seem right to you? It makes no sense at all.
Mort Walker wrote:600,000 W/15s = 40,000 J/s = 40 KW
In one hour: 40 * 3600 = 144 KWHr energy
I mean no offence, but the above calculation is wrong in many ways and at many levels. The most important point is that you are dividing watts by seconds and ending up with watts again! And that number of 144 kWHr is pretty meaningless. May I ask if you really understand these units?
It does and I think you're misunderstanding me. For this purpose, power is defined as Joules/second. 600 KW of power delivered for 15s, not energy, but power. This is the burst power delivered for a short duration. The division is not there but to represent the time elapsed. The purpose is to determine the equivalent Joules/second. Which is 40 KJoules/second. It is 600 MJ of energy released in 15 seconds.

Should the burst power continue for one hour, the energy delivered at 40 KW * 3600 seconds = 144,000 KWHr = 144 MWHr. Not 144 KW, as I left off the 3 digits.

The point being, right now fuel is dispensed at roughly 20 liters/min at a petrol pump. A city bus has about a 200 liter fuel tank. To fill it up would take about 10 minutes. That should be the goal for EV type bus. The minimum for an EV type bus would be a battery of at least 500 KWHr, but what is an acceptable time to charge it to full? This is where EVs have there limitations. A fuel cell would make more sense as the power distribution infrastructure spending would be huge.
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Re: Policy Changes in India: Electric Vehicles, Pollution Control, Energy Source Mix, Etc.

Post by Mort Walker »

Gyan wrote:India is lucky to have mild climate & short distance for Bus to travel. A city bus needs to do around 200-400km a day. Which can be managed by a single overnight charge.

Inter City Bus needs to do around 400-800 a day, with 3-4 one hour stops, which are adequate for full charging by a Super Charger

The problem is more difficult for cold nations with longer distances to travel like USA, Canada, or Even China.
People are used to AC. Any EV that uses an AC would have decreased range. The big advantage of a city bus is that with lots of stop and go, the regenerative braking will significantly improve range, but it also means the AC runs longer. Performance of EVs in very hot and cold climates are not desirable.

Metros or even trams with bus type wheels and tyres will be easier to implement in the top 20 cities across India. Metro-rail is now spreading to 2nd tier cities and planning has begun. This is a good thing.
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