Redesigning the National Solar Mission for Rural India

The success of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission depends on certain critical features – the subsidy structure, the role of standardised systems and institutional models of delivery As the actual costs of small systems are considerably higher, on a per watt basis, than the benchmark costs assumed for the subsidy, smaller systems that are within the reach of the rural poor receive lower subsidies than larger systems.

Scoping technology options for India’s oil security: Part II – Coal to liquids and bio-diesel

India's diesel consumption is several times that of petrol In this article, we examine two options for meeting India's diesel demand: coal to liquids and bio-diesel Coal gasification, followed by Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis offers an opportunity for large-scale production of diesel as proven by South Africa, and now being attempted by China and Qatar. India could consider this option given its large coal reserves.

Analytical derivation of explicit J–V model of a solar cell from physics based implicit model

Recently a simple explicit model was introduced to represent the J–V characteristics of an illuminated solar cell with parasitic resistances and bias dependent photocurrent as vm + jn = 1. Here the normalized voltage, v and normalized current density j can be represented as v = V/Voc and j = J/Jsc respectively, where Voc is the open circuit voltage and Jsc is the short circuit current density. This model is useful for design, characterization and simple fill factor calculation and its applicability was demonstrated with the measured data of a wide variety of solar cells.

A Statistical Model for Wind Power on the Basis of Ramp Analysis

Due to stochastic nature of wind distribution, wind power output comes with unscheduled changes called ramp events. In this paper, a semi-analytical approach is considered to analyze the distribution of ramp events. A simple empirical equation is derived based on the probability of wind ramp events considering the stochastic nature of wind power distribution for the Indian state of Karnataka.

Determination of favorable inter-particle interactions for formation of substitutionally ordered solid phases from a binary mixture of oppositely charged colloidal suspensions

This paper introduces the concept of using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) techniques for predicting electrochemical potential of cathode materials in combination with first-principles based quantum mechanical calculations. The proposed method can be used to predict the Lithium ion battery voltage if a new material is chosen as cathode. The methodology has low time-space complexity of computation and aims to integrate ANN with quantum mechanics based Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations for accelerated insertion of new materials into engineering systems.

Harnessing Solar Energy: Options for India

The overall goal of the off-grid guidelines of the JNNSM is to achieve wider dissemination of solar
technology, and a generous capital subsidy of up to 90% is offered for rural applications Even so,
there are several bottlenecks to large-scale dissemination Primarily, the techno-economics,
financing and institutional mechanisms of several solar applications are not well understood
Therefore, these form a focus of this study In addition, this study looks at the Government of India’s

Creating Sustainable Urban Systems: Need for Redesigning Indicators for Urban Infrastructure and Services

The process of infrastructure project determination is often inadequate leading to outcomes that do not address the intended purpose and/or have unintended consequences. As the world and India commit towards charting a more sustainable development path, there is a need to take a ‘ relook’ at the outcomes of a project from a ‘sustainability’ perspective. This paper presents a framework which elaborates on key sustainable development principles in the context of urban development.