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India needs to move to homegrown manufacturing of cheap solar and green hydrogen for storage. Solar energy is something that India gets a lot of. Especially dur

India needs to move to homegrown manufacturing of cheap solar and green hydrogen for storage. Solar energy is something that India gets a lot of. Especially during summer solar energy could help with the extra demand in energy because of high heat.

r0b05 4y ago
That is a good point. They are perfectly situated to capitalize on the sun. They have the manpower as well. Unfortunately, politics often get in the way of progress.
- llampx 4y ago
  India has funded solar panel research and development, but it is a small country for the number of people who need the power. As mentioned, hot and dusty too, both are bad for solar panel efficiency.
  - r0b05 4y ago
    Well we should be looking at ways to get around the dust and heat through innovation. Perhaps more durable materials would be a start. And it does not have to power the whole country - even 50% will provide a relief. People need to stop thinking in binary terms when it comes to energy.
robinsoh 4y ago
> India needs to move to homegrown manufacturing of cheap solar I doubt India could manufacture solar cheaper than China which already has all of the necessary ecosystems for massive scale solar panel manufacturing. > solar energy could help with the extra demand in energy because of high heat It may seem counter-intuitive, but solar panel efficiency is affected negatively by temperature increases. Most solar panels have a temperature coefficient of around -0.3% / °C to -0.5% / °C. So at 50C , you're expecting more than 10% loss. Most people don't realize a lot of electronics just isn't designed to operate in such extremes. Plastics start to lose rigidity, glues start to detach, liquid crystals start to behave slightly differently.
- dmix 4y ago
  Additionally Pakistan installed a giant solar farm it lost 30%+ of projected efficiency due to getting covered in dust, requiring a large budget to constantly clean them. So hot/dusty places are bad places for these. Despite a lot of sci-fi books which talk about covering deserts in solar farms.
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    I wonder if there's an opportunity to install some kind of wipers on panels.
    - philipkglass 4y ago
      Ecoppia makes robotic systems to clean dust off of solar panels without using water: https://www.ecoppia.com/technology https://www.ecoppia.com/technology Some of their systems are already deployed in India. One example: Site: Bikaner Solar Park Location: Bikaner, Rajasthan, India Capacity: 438 MW Bikaner solar Park it is located in the north part of Rajasthan surrounded by the Thar Desert. While providing optimal irradiation, this geographic location poses great challenges in terms of soiling losses, which fluctuate between 17-25%. As such, it requires between 12-36 conventional wet manual cleaning cycles. With the installation of Ecoppia’s E4 fully automated and water free cleaning solution, there was no longer a need to perform manual wet cleaning, saving billions of liters of water every year. Moreover, Ecoppia’s daily cleaning, significantly reduced soiling loses, maximizing the site’s productivity. https://www.ecoppia.com/projects https://www.ecoppia.com/projects
  - justin66 4y ago
    > requiring a large budget to constantly clean them It's not unfathomable that a cheap, automated method of doing this could be developed.
    - robinsoh 4y ago
      > It's not unfathomable that a cheap, automated method of doing this could be developed. And that cheap, automated method will require energy as well. Perhaps a bigger concern maybe that such a method may require a cheap fluid to prevent damage to the panel coatings and that might be water, already a scarce resource in those places.

r0b05 4y ago

That is a good point. They are perfectly situated to capitalize on the sun. They have the manpower as well. Unfortunately, politics often get in the way of progress.

llampx 4y ago
India has funded solar panel research and development, but it is a small country for the number of people who need the power. As mentioned, hot and dusty too, both are bad for solar panel efficiency.
- r0b05 4y ago
  Well we should be looking at ways to get around the dust and heat through innovation. Perhaps more durable materials would be a start. And it does not have to power the whole country - even 50% will provide a relief. People need to stop thinking in binary terms when it comes to energy.

robinsoh 4y ago

> India needs to move to homegrown manufacturing of cheap solar I doubt India could manufacture solar cheaper than China which already has all of the necessary ecosystems for massive scale solar panel manufacturing. > solar energy could help with the extra demand in energy because of high heat It may seem counter-intuitive, but solar panel efficiency is affected negatively by temperature increases. Most solar panels have a temperature coefficient of around -0.3% / °C to -0.5% / °C. So at 50C , you're expecting more than 10% loss. Most people don't realize a lot of electronics just isn't designed to operate in such extremes. Plastics start to lose rigidity, glues start to detach, liquid crystals start to behave slightly differently.

dmix 4y ago
Additionally Pakistan installed a giant solar farm it lost 30%+ of projected efficiency due to getting covered in dust, requiring a large budget to constantly clean them. So hot/dusty places are bad places for these. Despite a lot of sci-fi books which talk about covering deserts in solar farms.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  I wonder if there's an opportunity to install some kind of wipers on panels.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    Ecoppia makes robotic systems to clean dust off of solar panels without using water: https://www.ecoppia.com/technology https://www.ecoppia.com/technology Some of their systems are already deployed in India. One example: Site: Bikaner Solar Park Location: Bikaner, Rajasthan, India Capacity: 438 MW Bikaner solar Park it is located in the north part of Rajasthan surrounded by the Thar Desert. While providing optimal irradiation, this geographic location poses great challenges in terms of soiling losses, which fluctuate between 17-25%. As such, it requires between 12-36 conventional wet manual cleaning cycles. With the installation of Ecoppia’s E4 fully automated and water free cleaning solution, there was no longer a need to perform manual wet cleaning, saving billions of liters of water every year. Moreover, Ecoppia’s daily cleaning, significantly reduced soiling loses, maximizing the site’s productivity. https://www.ecoppia.com/projects https://www.ecoppia.com/projects
- justin66 4y ago
  > requiring a large budget to constantly clean them It's not unfathomable that a cheap, automated method of doing this could be developed.
  - robinsoh 4y ago
    > It's not unfathomable that a cheap, automated method of doing this could be developed. And that cheap, automated method will require energy as well. Perhaps a bigger concern maybe that such a method may require a cheap fluid to prevent damage to the panel coatings and that might be water, already a scarce resource in those places.