Renewable Sources of Energy

[bala]

From Waste to Fuel! IIT Bombay Scientists Turn Dry Leaves into Clean Cooking Energy

In a breakthrough for sustainable living, researchers from IIT Bombay have developed an innovative method to convert dry fallen leaves into clean cooking fuel — offering a smart, eco-friendly alternative to traditional fuels like LPG. This cutting-edge solution not only helps manage organic waste but also significantly reduces dependence on fossil fuels. By transforming discarded biomass into usable energy, the technology addresses two major challenges: urban waste management and affordable clean cooking.

The innovation could be a game-changer, especially for rural and semi-urban areas where access to clean fuel remains limited. It also aligns with India’s broader sustainability goals, promoting circular economy practices and reducing carbon emissions.

[vera_k]

Still need power during the monsoon somehow.

Solar energy, cheap battery storage can meet 90% of India's power demand at affordable costs

[Amber G.]

X from PM Modiji:

A major boost to clean energy and development in the Northeast! The approval of the Kalai-II Hydro Electric Project in Arunachal Pradesh will strengthen power supply, generate sustainable energy and bring infrastructure and opportunities to the region.

Link: Cabinet approves Investment Proposal for construction of 1200 MW Kalai-II Hydro Electric Project in Anjaw District of Arunachal Pradesh with an outlay of Rs.14105.83 crore

[Amber G.]

India pulls off a power miracle. A big thanks to the Sun

When India's power demand surged to a record high, it wasn't only the coal-fired plants that kept the lights and fans on. The Sun quietly blessed and delivered its share. Amid the searing heatwave, the country saw power demand soar to an all-time high of 256 gigawatt (GW), which was achieved without a shortage. Even as thermal power dominated with a 66% contribution, solar stepped in a big way with a 21% share. The country's energy story is beginning to reflect a subtle but significant shift towards cleaner, daylight-driven power

[bala]

How Adani Turned Khavda Desert Into World's LARGEST Solar Farm | $18 Billion Mega Project

Discover how India is building the world’s largest solar and wind park in the Rann of Kutch. This $18 billion Khavda project will generate 30 GW clean energy - enough to power entire countries. Learn why this desert location was chosen, the challenges of extreme climate, and how advanced tech like TOPCon solar panels, wind turbines, and robotic cleaning systems are transforming energy production.

[A_Gupta]

Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com opines:

But the deeper impact of this crisis, one entirely of Trump’s own making, has been to convince many countries, especially but not only in East Asia, that oil and gas are too vulnerable to price shocks and supply instability. Meanwhile, renewables like solar and wind have now crossed the threshold where they are not only simply cheaper than fossils fuels but, as a tech product, will continue to get cheaper over time. Wind and solar energy can be produced entirely within your sovereign borders. So the Strait crisis is looking like it may be a turning point in the climate/renewables energy transition.

As is often the case with such transitions, the building blocks are already in place. The economics of renewables are already unstoppable just on a cost basis. They’re cheaper. You also have a superpower, China, heavily, heavily invested in electro-power and eager, both for economic and geopolitical reasons, to export the technology around the world. So the building blocks are there. But a crisis can force everyone to consider the matter afresh, with the new facts of the Strait crisis, coming just a few years after the start of the Ukraine war, to spur different energy strategies for cost and supply stability into the future.

The key dimension to all of this is that none of this debate or conversation outside the United States, so far as I can tell, is driven by climate. It’s there in the background of course. But Egypt isn’t on a crash course to shift from 10% to 45% of its electricity from renewables in two years because it’s concerned about the future of the planet. Its government is focused on reliability and cost. Beyond what I’m gently calling climate concerns, none of this global conversation is embedded in what in the U.S. we might call “woke” politics, either for or against. That’s all a U.S. thing. Or, the U.S. is the only place where culture war politics trump the nuts and bolts of which source of energy is cheaper and more reliable.

AI says that Egypt today depends on natural gas, and has been badly hit by the current crisis. The plan is to get to 45% renewables with huge help from China.

[Vayutuvan]

IOW,

1. China will continue to build coal-fired power plants
2. Germany will restart their nuclear power program (if it is possible at all). There were solid scientific studies on the effects of windmills in Germany. The empirical evidence points to parts of Germany (NE, IIRC) turning semi-arid. So windmills have unintended consequences. The same is probably true with Solar. We will know in a few years.
3. The way out for India is twofold - short term through increasing the efficiency of current power plants, improving the grid to reduce transmission losses, solar, wind, and biogas, and long term Biogas replacing NG, hydrogen through nuclear power and nuclear power itself, and possibly new renewable sources due to some breakthrough in basic sciences.

[Cyrano]

By what definition are solar and wind renewables? The only ones to me are hydro and biomass.

[Jay]

By what definition are solar and wind renewables? The only ones to me are hydro and biomass.

Hard to say without knowing what your definition of renewables is. Can you please expand on this?

[Amber G.]

By what definition are solar and wind renewables? The only ones to me are hydro and biomass.

Solar and wind are defined as renewables because they rely on replenishable natural flux—the sun’s fusion and atmospheric pressure gradients—which aren't depleted by use. While hydro and biomass store this energy in matter (water/carbon), solar and wind capture the same "income" energy directly from the source.

[Cyrano]

Hydro - build a dam and generate energy for decades and rivers will replenish the water

Biomass - build a biogas plant and use for decades, agriculture and waste management will replenish the mass. Local generation and use.

Solar - depends on where you are on the planet, solar panels are not renewables and have to be subsidized and last 5-10 years max.
Recycling of panels is not economically viable.
Also needs precious metals. Maintenance is required to keep panels clean. Creates grid instability.

Wind - depends on where you are on the planet, generation is dependent on a specific range of wind speed. EU data show about 21% of generated electricity wrt installed capacity. Recycling is a nightmare. Needs rare earths and magnets. Maintenance is expensive. Creates grid instability.

I would call Solar and wind as intermittent energy sources, unless panels and windmills are recyclable or last for decades before replacement, which they are not.
No amount of sophisticated mumbo jumbo can change the basic nature of these technologies.

[bala]

BTW Tesla and Australia are leading the way towards battery storage for power

Link

// with Ola producing 4860 cells in India, Ola can aspire to supply storage to balance the grid power in India.

[Jay]

It feels like twisting of logic and ignorance of basic facts to arrive at this conclusion.

Solar - depends on where you are on the planet

As against where Hydro dams? Hydro dams are limited by even more geographic constraints than solar. They take an order of magnitude more resources to build and maintain over solar and costs a lot more too.

And bio gas is even less efficient and incredibly stupid to implement at a large scale. How do one collect organic matter on a large scale to supply a power plant and generate electricity even for a small town's needs? There is a reason why none of this is scaled and within India's context "gober gas" is even more impractical than other means.

solar panels are not renewables and have to be subsidized and last 5-10 years max.

Incorrect. The industry standard is most manufacturers offer 25-year warranties that guarantee at least 80% efficiency and for industrial scale this is even longer. Subsidy for solar panels to reach cost parity with other sources has not been true for close to a decade now. Compare that with hydro where you need to subside land acquisition costs to the tune of thousands of acres and it becomes clear why the cost to generate a MW of electricity is cheaper with solar than other sources.

Recycling of panels is not economically viable.

Try recycling a dam then. There is a reason why building new hydro plants have slowed down significantly in the last decade.

Wind - depends on where you are on the planet,

Except for nuclear, coal and other fuel based power generation, the same constraint would apply for Hydro too.

Recycling is a nightmare.

Compared to hydro or bio plants, it is not.

Creates grid instability.

Wind and solar are just a power generation sources and they are not the causes of instability. Badly built transmission infra is the source of grid instability and losses.

Needs rare earths and magnets.

Even though the word rare is used here, these rare earth materials are not rare nor exotic. Like every mineral, they need to be mined just as copper used in hydro power generation is also mined. This is a nothing burger.

[Amber G.]

@Cyrano, @Jay - it seems we are tripping over the definition of 'hardware' versus 'fuel.' If we disqualified energy sources based on the expiration date of their machinery, even your beloved dams would fail the test—silt happens!

To put Jay’s excellent points into perspective: - claiming solar is 'geographically limited' while championing hydro is like complaining about the cost of a flashlight while standing in a canyon you had to flood just to turn on a bulb. And as for the '5-year' lifespan—if that were true, the industry’s 25-year warranties would be the greatest collective hallucination in financial history.

Pesh hai:

The Jingle: The Harvest vs. The Hoard
The Hydro-Hording Blues
You’ll flood a valley, move a town,
To keep the turbine spinning ‘round.
You call it 'constant,' 'firm,' and 'sure,'
While solar’s deemed a 'tech impure.'

The 5-Year Myth

You say the panels fade and die,
A five-year blink, a techno-lie?
The warranty says twenty-five,
While 'gober gas' can barely thrive.

The Geography Gap

'The sun won't shine in every spot!'
(As if a dam works where it’s hot?)
A river needs a mountain's face,
But photons rain down every place.

The Moral

The 'rare' in earths is just a name,
(Like copper in your hydro frame).
The source is flux, the gear is finite,
Don't blame the sun for grid-loss twilight!

A Quick Technical Note ( Amber G. Addendum - Thanks Jay.)

The "grid instability" argument is often a transmission problem, not a generation one. Think of it like this: if a city’s pipes burst because everyone took a shower at once, you wouldn’t blame the water—you’d blame the plumbing. High-voltage DC lines and better storage (like the pumped hydro you like!) are the "plumbing" fixes for the "income" energy of wind and sun.

[Cyrano]

Vayutuvan garu,
This may interest you
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ... 010761.ece

[KL Dubey]

By what definition are solar and wind renewables? The only ones to me are hydro and biomass.

Solar and wind are defined as renewables because they rely on replenishable natural flux—the sun’s fusion and atmospheric pressure gradients—which aren't depleted by use. While hydro and biomass store this energy in matter (water/carbon), solar and wind capture the same "income" energy directly from the source.

There are only 3 sources of energy on Earth: solar, nuclear, and gravity. All are fundamentally nearly inexhaustible. However, some of their manifestations/carriers are not easily "renewable" in a reasonable time.

1) Solar (direct radiation, and indirect wind/hydro/biomass) (all renewable)

2) Nuclear (direct fission from surface-mined resources is currently not renewable, but things like >90% recycling or fusion could make it effectively renewable)

3) Gravity (plays a role in geothermal and fossil energy, also tidal energy due to lunar gravity)

Additionally, there are some combinations of the above:

- Geothermal energy is a combination of nuclear (decays inside the earth) plus gravitational (compression increasing pressure and temperature). it's effectively renewable.

- Fossil energy is a mix of solar (which is stored in the biomass deposits), gravity (which pulls the deposits down to high pressure), and nuclear (which provides geothermal heat). This takes a very long time, making it non-renewable.

[KL Dubey]

A First Among Major Nations, India Is Industrializing With Solar: https://e360.yale.edu/features/india-solar

Also, useful documents from the India Energy & Climate Center at UC Berkeley (see Resources section): https://live-iecc-gspp.pantheon.berkeley.edu/

[A_Gupta]

On biogas:
https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/ ... et-report/

India has an estimated sustainable compressed biogas (CBG) production potential of up to 90 billion cubic meters (bcm) equivalent (bcme) per year, equivalent to around 120% of the country’s natural gas demand in 2024, highlighting the scale of domestic renewable gas resources available.

The report highlights that digestate, referred to as Fermented Organic Matter (FOM), contains key nutrients but has variable composition, making it better suited as a supplement to chemical fertilisers currently rather than a full replacement. With improved soil health, it is possible to gradually reduce chemical fertiliser use in the future. Farmer awareness of FOM remains low. As such, CBG producers are promoting FOM through trials and outreach, with some developing enriched products like PROM to enhance value.

Plant utilisation rates (how efficiently the biogas produced at a facility) are identified as a key constraint on delivery, with average utilisation currently around 35%. The IEA notes that improving utilisation to around 44% could enable 2030 blending targets to be met without the need for additional plants.

-----
LNG Crunch Nudges India To Fast-Track Compressed Biogas Programme
As LNG supplies tighten due to the West Asia conflict, India is fast-tracking compressed biogas (CBG) as a domestic alternative. With 40–45% of LNG imports coming from Qatar, disruptions pose a major energy risk. The government is now scaling up CBG through a unified policy push, expanding schemes like SATAT and promoting gas blending—similar to ethanol. Made from waste, CBG offers a cleaner, homegrown solution. Can it reduce India’s dependence on global gas markets?
https://youtu.be/ci46PHBscLA?si=bVo_H3V1VzTJruKb

[Vayutuvan]

Vayutuvan garu,
This may interest you
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ... 010761.ece

@Cyrano gaaru, nice.

I hope they succeed in those efforts to scale up. The article glosses over the details for obvious reasons. It is just news being reported.

Broadly, the factors that make or break the process are

- How clean is the Biogas, i.e., is it grid-ready? Also, is it good for industrial use where the gas comes into contact with the material being processed?

- How do they plan to dispose of the digestate? No plant has enough space to keep the digestate for a long period of time at the plant site. Transporting the digestate to the site of usage consumes energy (money).

[williams]

Vayutuvan garu,
This may interest you
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ ... 010761.ece

@Cyrano gaaru, nice.

I hope they succeed in those efforts to scale up. The article glosses over the details for obvious reasons. It is just news being reported.

Broadly, the factors that make or break the process are

- How clean is the Biogas, i.e., is it grid-ready? Also, is it good for industrial use where the gas comes into contact with the material being processed?

- How do they plan to dispose of the digestate? No plant has enough space to keep the digestate for a long period of time at the plant site. Transporting the digestate to the site of usage consumes energy (money).

IMO Biogas cycle can be implemented at smaller scale as a local production for households, apartment complexes and village communities. You just create a waste disposal system where enough organic materials accumulate and fulfill the house hold cooking requirements. The kind of biogas that you want to produce for industries can be done in similar fashion but again disciplined waste disposal cycle is the key. Digestate can become liquid and soild fertilizer components. Hence the full cycle needs to be managed as a well defined process. In terms of grid readiness. I would first forget the grid until the processes are established. We can add to the grid as the adoption mass reaches the critical stage. BTW this will also solve the methane emission issue. Some people say there will be CO2 emission. You are going to have CO2 emission in any case for other fuel sources too.