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DPM Wong, India’s PM Modi discuss clean energy and fintech cooperation

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 21, 2022 / , , , ,

(From left) Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, DPM Lawrence Wong, Indian PM Narendra Modi and Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. PHOTO: PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE

NEW DELHI, 20 Sep (The Straits Times) – Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed new areas of cooperation such as clean energy and fintech during a meeting in Indian capital city New Delhi on Monday.

Mr Modi was also briefed about the outcomes of the inaugural session of the India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable (ISMR), which was held last Saturday.

He conveyed his good wishes for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the people of Singapore, and expressed his hope that initiatives such as the ISMR “would help further strengthen the bilateral relations between the two countries”.

Mr Wong, who is also Finance Minister, is on a five-day visit to India aimed at expanding cooperation between the two countries.

“We had excellent discussions on new areas of cooperation such as green hydrogen, solar energy, fintech, as well as data links,” said Mr Wong on Facebook following Monday’s meeting, which was also attended by Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong and Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of India Nirmala Sitharaman.

“India is an important strategic partner of Singapore across many sectors. I am glad that the pace of bilateral engagements has picked up substantially as the pandemic subsides,” he added.

He also said he looked forward to restarting the Singapore-India Hackathon, which was disrupted by Covid-19, “to build bridges between our young talents”.

The hackathon was held in 2018 and then in 2019 with mixed teams of university students from both countries racing to create software solutions to real-life problems in areas such as education and clean energy.

India and Singapore share close economic and political ties, with regular high-level political exchanges that have picked up again with an exchange of visits in recent months.

Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan was in India for the Special Asean-India Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in June, while Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who is also Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, visited India in July.

The two sides held the 16th Foreign Office Consultations in Singapore in August.

Mr Wong, Dr Balakrishnan, Mr Gan, and Minister for Transport and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations S. Iswaran formed the Singapore ministerial delegation at Saturday’s ISMR.

The Indian side included Ms Sitharaman, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.

Economic ties between the two countries have been guided by the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, which was signed in 2005.

In 2021, annual bilateral trade in goods stood at $26.8 billion. Singapore was the top source of foreign direct investment into India in the financial year 2021-22, accounting for 27 per cent of the country’s record-high US$83.5 billion (S$117.6 billion) inflow.

During his ongoing visit to India, Mr Wong met both federal and state leaders.

On Sunday, he met Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel.

In a speech in Gujarat state on Sunday, Mr Wong highlighted the close ties between the two countries and the potential of cooperation in newer emerging areas such as fintech amid India’s growing digital economy.

“Singapore has long believed in the potential and promise of India,” he said on Sunday

“That is why we have been investing in India. Over the last 20 years, our investments in India have grown by about 20 times,” he said.

Author: Nirmala Ganapathy, India Bureau Chief

Switching to renewable energy could save trillions – study

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 21, 2022 / , , ,

The cost of green energy like wind and solar has been falling for decades. Image: Philip Silverman

LONDON, Sep 13 (BBC) – Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an Oxford University study says.

The report said it was wrong and pessimistic to claim that moving quickly towards cleaner energy sources was expensive.

Gas prices have soared on mounting concerns over energy supplies.

But the researchers say that going green now makes economic sense because of the falling cost of renewables.

“Even if you’re a climate denier, you should be on board with what we’re advocating,” Prof Doyne Farmer from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School told BBC News.

“Our central conclusion is that we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it’s going to save us money,” he said.

The report’s findings are based on looking at historic price data for renewables and fossil fuels and then modelling how they’re likely to change in the future.

The data for fossil fuels goes from 2020 back more than 100 years and shows that after accounting for inflation, and market volatility, the price hasn’t changed much.

Renewables have only been around for a few decades, so there’s less data. But in that time continual improvements in technology have meant the cost of solar and wind power have fallen rapidly, at a rate approaching 10% a year.

The report’s expectation that the price of renewables will continue to fall is based on “probabilistic” modelling, using data on how massive investment and economies of scale have made other similar technologies cheaper.

“Our latest research shows scaling-up key green technologies will continue to drive their costs down, and the faster we go, the more we will save,” says Dr Rupert Way, the report’s lead author from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

Wind and solar are already the cheapest option for new power projects, but questions remain over how to best store power and balance the grid when the changes in the weather leads to fall in renewable output.

Cost of net zero

Back in 2019 Philip Hammond, then Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to the prime minister to say that the cost of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in the UK would be more than £1tn. This report says the likely costs have been over-estimated and have deterred investment.

It also says predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the cost of keeping global temperatures rises under 2 degrees would correspond to a loss of GDP by 2050 were too pessimistic. The transition to renewables was, it says, likely to turn out to be a “net economic benefit”.

The research has been published in the journal Joule and is a collaboration between the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, the Oxford Martin Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition, the Smith School of Enterprise & Environment at the University of Oxford, and SoDa Labs at Monash University.

Author: Jonah Fisher

Global climate goals threatened by lack of clean tech collaboration: IEA

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 20, 2022 / , , ,

Birds fly over a closed steel factory where chimneys of another working factory are seen in the background, in Tangshan, Hebei province, China, February 27, 2016. Image: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Global efforts to reduce emissions and curb rising temperatures are threatened by a lack of collaboration between countries in sharing and developing new technology, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report on Tuesday.

Major economies around the world such as the United States, and European countries are seeking to reach net zero emissions by 2050 to try to limit a rise in global temperatures well below 2 deg C, requiring huge changes in energy production, transportation and food production.

“Through international collaboration, we can make the transition quicker, cheaper and easier for everyone,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement with the first Breakthrough Agenda report, released on Tuesday with the International Renewable Energy Agency and the United Nations (UN) Climate Change High Level Champions.

“Without this collaboration, the transition to net zero emissions will be much more challenging and could be delayed by decades,” he said.

The report said collaboration needed to ramp up and made 25 recommendations including increasing cross-border power super grids to support cross country trading in low-carbon power such as wind and solar.

It also said countries should agree a common date by which all new vehicles should be zero emission, such as electric vehicles, suggesting 2035 for cars and vans and 2040 for heavy duty vehicles.

“This will send a clear signal to industry and unlock larger economies of scale and faster cost reductions, making the transition more affordable for all countries,” the report said.

Countries should also work to increase the production of low-carbon steel to over 100 million tonnes by 2030 from less than 1 million tonnes today, it said.

The report was requested by world leaders at last year’s COP climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to help align actions and scale up investment in technology in five major sectors – power, road transport, steel, hydrogen and agriculture – that account for around 60 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Author: Susanna Twidale

Solar PV employed around 3.4 million people in 2021

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 20, 2022 / , , ,

Image: Swinerton Renewable Energy

Almost half of the workers were employed in China, around 280,000 in North America, over 260,000 in Europe, and some 50,000 in Africa, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). The vast majority of workers were employed in manufacturing and installation of new capacity, with solar jobs paying lower wage premiums than the nuclear, oil, and gas industries.

From pv magazine

The energy sector employed over 65 million people in 2019, or 2% of global employment, according to the newly published World Energy Employment Report by the IEA. Half of this workforce is employed in the clean energy sector, with solar PV employing more workers than any other power generation technology.

According to the report, power generation employment totaled 11.2 million in 2019, comprised of 3 million in solar PV, 2 million in coal power, and 1.9 million in hydro. Onshore and offshore wind power employed 1.2 million and nuclear power 1 million. Employment in other renewables totaled around 710,000 employees.

The agency estimates that employment in the entire energy sector in 2021 was up by around 1.3 million and could increase by another 6 percentage points by 2022, with clean energy accounting for all of the growth. Energy investment could rise by 8% in 2022, reaching $2.4 trillion, but with almost half of the increase in capital spending linked to higher costs.

Around 3.4 million workers were employed in solar PV in 2021, almost half of which in China, enabled by lower-cost labor, according to the report. North America employed around 280,000 workers and Europe over 260,000. There were around 50,000 people working in the solar industry in Africa, with this number set to grow due to the proliferation of on- and off-grid solutions in the continent, the agency said.

Most employees in the industry work in manufacturing and installation of new capacity, with manufacturing jobs being strongly concentrated in a few countries: China alone accounted for 260,000 workers in the production of polysilicon, wafers, cells, and modules.

“Residential solar panels are often installed by construction workers and electricians who also work on other projects, such that many solar PV jobs are not full-time, and it can be difficult to count employees accurately,” the agency noted.

Shortage of skilled labor poses a major challenge for the industry, which is expected to see continuous growth in annual capacity installation in every IEA scenario. Around $215 billion were invested in the industry in 2021, an annual average growth of 5% over the previous decade, according to the report. Total installed capacity worldwide stood at 740 GW in 2019, comprising 425 GW of utility-scale installations and 315 GW of residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) installations.

Construction of new projects, including manufacturing of components, is reportedly the main driver of employment across the energy sector, employing over 60% of the workforce. Industries with a higher share of workers in construction, like solar, have lower wage premiums than industries like nuclear, oil, and gas, according to the report. The solar industry also has less trade union representation than fossil fuel industries, where labor representation has led to higher wages.

According to the IEA’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, 14 million new clean energy jobs will be created by 2030, with another 16 million workers shifting to new roles related to clean energy. In this scenario, around 60% of new employees will require at least two years of post-secondary education, making worker training essential to the sustainable development of the industry.

The report also shows that currently women are strongly under-represented in the energy sector, accounting for 16% of the sector’s workforce, compared to 39% of global employment.

“Women make up a very small share of senior management in energy, just under 14% on average. However, there is substantial variation among energy sectors, with the percentage shares in nuclear and coal the lowest at 8% and 9%, respectively, whereas electric utilities are among the highest with nearly 20%. This compares with 16% of women in senior management economy-wide,” the report says. There are no major differences in the share of women’s employment between fossil fuels and clean energy globally.

Author: Beatriz Santos

What does the green transition mean for energy jobs?

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 19, 2022 / , , ,

Workers in the Anglo Ashanti mine at a depth of about 330 metres in Obuasi, Ghana. Image: World Bank Photo Collection, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Flickr.

As calls grow for climate action, the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner power sources raises questions about who can access the new jobs, what skills they require and how much they pay.

From The Thomas Reuters Foundation

LONDON, Sept 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The energy crisis fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put renewed focus on how countries generate and use their power, with several European nations rushing to wean themselves off Russian gas amid a global shift to cleaner energy sources.

As the world seeks to decarbonise by switching from fossil fuels such as coal and oil to renewables like solar and wind, many energy workers now find themselves in the same position.

The rise of clean energy is raising questions about who has access to these new jobs, what skills they require, how much they pay, and what can be done to help communities that rely on traditional extractive industries make the green transition.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation spoke to climate experts to find out more about what the changing energy mix means for jobs.

How many green energy jobs are there?

About 65 million people work in the energy industry worldwide, and clean energy workers now account for more than half of them, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

These clean energy jobs include workers in bioenergy supply, low-carbon power generation including nuclear and renewables, power grids and storage, manufacturing of electric vehicles, and energy efficiency, according to the IEA’s definition.

“It’s clear that the clean energy economy isn’t around the corner, it’s here today,” said Joel Jaeger, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, a think tank.

He said these jobs have been more resilient to the economic impacts of the pandemic compared to fossil fuel sectors, with oil and gas having not recovered their employment levels since 2020 despite the subsequent high prices of the two commodities.

If current international climate pledges are met, the IEA predicts that an additional 13 million workers will be employed in clean energy and related sectors by 2030, outnumbering the expected decline in traditional fossil fuel industries.

But if countries accelerate decarbonisation to get on a path to net zero by 2050, that number of expected jobs would double, the IEA says.

This transition could also change the gender imbalance of the energy industry: according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), women hold 32 per cent of jobs in renewable energy, on average, compared to 22 per cent of those in oil and gas.

Workers weigh a bag of coal outside a warehouse in an industrial area in Mumbai, India May 31, 2017. Image: REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade

Where are the green jobs located?

Jobs in clean and renewable energy are located around the world, but the biggest and fastest growing workforce is in Asia.

China, home to almost 30 per cent of the global energy workforce, dominates the manufacturing of solar panels – also known as photovoltaics (PV) – and employs nearly half of those working in the field, according to the IEA.

“Different regions are further along than others,” said Jaeger, pointing out that the Middle East and Russia are still dominated by traditional fossil fuel jobs.

“Emerging market and developing economies are going to have more jobs no matter what, because those economies are generally a lot more labour intensive,” he said, citing the example of India where clean energy jobs now outnumber fossil fuel roles.

China’s domination of solar PV manufacturing was partly made possible because the equipment is easier to export than other technologies, said Aurélien Saussay, an economist at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.

Wind turbines, by comparison, have strong regional hubs in northern Europe and the United States which are less threatened by competition from Asia, he said.

Are they high-quality jobs?

Energy jobs in both new and traditional sectors tend to be higher-skilled and better-paid compared to the rest of the economy.

About 45 per cent of energy roles are high-skilled compared to a quarter of general jobs, according to the IEA.

However, workers in coal, oil and gas tend to enjoy higher wages than those in renewable industries like wind and solar.

In the United States, for example, workers in natural gas and coal have a wage premium of 59 per cent and 50 per cent respectively compared to national median hourly pay, far higher than the 36 per cent for wind and 28 per cent for solar, according to the US Energy and Employment Report.

This may be because traditional energy jobs tend to be more unionised and have benefitted from decades of labour representation, while clean energy sectors have a larger share of part-time or contract work, according to the IEA’s report.

This is especially true in emerging markets and developing economies, the IEA said, including in India where coal workers are paid around three to four times the national average.

Analysts also say that more lower-skilled jobs are becoming available as new clean energy sectors move from the research and development phase towards installation and construction of the new infrastructure.

This shift could mean new clean jobs offer less in terms of wages and security, yet are more accessible to those with lower levels of education.

Can fossil fuel workers transition to green jobs?

The good news for fossil fuel energy workers is that many of their skills are transferable in a greener economy.

Those working on offshore oil rigs, for example, have many skills that would be useful to offshore wind farms, while project managers for traditional energy infrastructure will likely be well-equipped for similar positions in new industries.

The biggest issue, however, according to the economist Saussay, is that clean energy roles will not necessarily be created in the same places as traditional jobs which were tied to fossil fuel resources in relatively remote areas.

“They tended to be creating highly-paid jobs in areas that had high unemployment and low wages,” Saussay added, highlighting traditional industrial regions around the world.

By comparison, clean energy jobs are more spread out and not concentrated in economically deprived areas.

He said this underlines the need to retrain and reskill traditional energy workers, while creating new employment prospects where they live to avoid social dislocation.

“If you don’t put in place accompanying policies, what you end up with is a community that is bereft of economic opportunity,” Saussay said.

Author: Jack Graham

Southeast Asia needs $210 bln annual investment on renewables -IRENA

Leave a Comment / News / By / September 19, 2022 / , , , ,

Workers walk between solar cell panels over the water surface of Sirindhorn Dam in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand April 8, 2021. Picture taken April 8, 2021 with a drone. Source: REUTERS/Prapan Chankaew

JAKARTA, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Southeast Asian nations need to more than double their annual investment on renewables to accelerate energy transition and to meet climate goals, a report released on Thursday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) showed.

IRENA said, in the long term, average annual investment of $210 billion was needed on renewable energy, energy efficiency and to support technologies and infrastructure in the period to 2050 to limit a global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.Advertisement · Scroll to continueADVERTISINGReport an ad

The investment is more than two and a half times the amount currently planned by Southeast Asian governments to reach their goals, IRENA said.

“Coal retirement, coupled with renewables and regional grid interconnection, is an indispensable step to aligning with net-zero targets,” IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera said.

Southeast Asia is home to 25% of the world’s geothermal generation capacity, but the region also has major coal reserves. The region’s biggest economy Indonesia is the world’s top exporter of thermal coal.Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport an ad

While half of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have pledged to stop using coal in the power sector, La Camera said climate commitments required concerted and accelerated action “that must begin now to have a hope of success.”

The region aims to have 23% of its primary energy supplied by renewables by 2025, however, investments in recent years show mixed progress, IRENA said.Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport an ad

“Accelerating energy transition is crucial in order to meet climate goals and support the region’s economic growth,” said Nuki Agya Utama, executive director of the ASEAN Centre for Energy, adding the bloc remained committed to its 2025 goals.

IRENA said countries could by investing more in renewables reduce their energy costs and avoid as much as $1.5 trillion of costs related to health and environmental damage from fossil fuels up to 2050.

Author: Fransiska Nangoy

Light-scattering structures to boost solar performance

Leave a Comment / News / By / August 10, 2022 / ,

Scientists at Penn State have found that a light-scattering structure could improve perovskite performance. Image: Penn State

An international team of scientists developed a nanoparticle structure which, when added to a solar cell, was shown to scatter light and potentially reflect it many times within the cell, contributing to a noticeable jump in current.

From pv magazine

A range of different additives and extra layers could change the way a solar cell surface interacts with light, and thus improve its performance. Among these is light scattering, where sunlight hits tiny particles embedded into the cell, and is reflected around the device rather than straight back out of it.

A group of US scientists led by Penn State University have demonstrated a 1% efficiency increase in perovskite solar cells by adding a nanoscale light trapping structure to the front of the cell. The achievement is also notable they started out investigation a completely different route to solar cell optimization, and ultimately discovered most of the gains thought to come from this are actually attributable to an accompanying light scattering effect.

“Some researchers in the literature have hypothesized and showed results that up-conversion nanoparticles provide a boost in performance,” said Shashank Priya, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State. “But this research shows that it doesn’t matter if you put in up-conversion nanoparticles or any other nanoparticles – they will show the boosted efficiency because of the enhance light scattering.”

Up-conversion is a process where a material added to a cell converts infrared radiation into visible light, which can be absorbed by the solar cell. This has long been pursued as a possible to way to reach efficiencies beyond what is thought to be theoretically possible in a single junction device. In this case, scientists at Macquarie University in Australia provided another crystalline material that does not exhibit the up-conversion effect, allowing the Penn State researchers to compare results.

They described their work in “Homogenization of Optical Field in Nanocrystal-Embedded Perovskite Composites,” which was published in ACS Energy Letters. The results showed that the materials were equally effective in improving the perovskite solar cell’s conversion efficiency. And with further calculations, the researchers were able to prove that the efficiency boost primarily came from light scattering, with up-conversion only having a negligible effect.

“We started to basically play around with nanoparticle distribution in the model, and we started to see that as you distribute the particles far away from each other, you start to see some enhanced scattering,” said Thomas Brown, associate professor at the University of Rome. “Then we had this breakthrough.”

The group says it will now investigate the optimization of the size, shape and distribution of particles in nanostructures to optimize performance even further.

Author: MARK HUTCHINS

Study finds 100% renewables would pay off within 6 years

Leave a Comment / News / By / August 10, 2022 / ,

Image: Mark Jacobson

New research from Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson outlines how 145 countries could meet 100% of their business-as-usual energy needs with wind, water, solar and energy storage. The study finds that in all the countries considered, lower-cost energy and other benefits mean the required investment for transition is paid off within six years. The study also estimates that worldwide, such a transition would create 28 million more jobs than it lost.

From pv magazine

As renewables come to represent a larger portion of the worldwide energy mix, and as targets are put in place to increase it further still, there are plenty of worries over the cost that radically changing our energy systems will entail. And the intermittent nature of wind and solar also creates concern about insufficient supply and possible blackouts.

The latest energy system models from Stanford University researcher Mark Jacobson, however, show that for 145 countries, the energy transition too 100% wind, water, solar and storage would pay for itself within six years, and ultimately cost less than continuing with the current energy systems.

“Worldwide, WWS reduces end use energy by 56.4%, private annual energy costs by 62.7% (from $17.8 to $6.6 trillion per year), and Social (private plus health plus climate) annual energy costs by 92.0% (from $83.2 to $6.6 trillion per year) at a present-value cost of $61.5 trillion,” Jacobson said in his most recent paper. “Thus, WWS requires less energy, costs less, and creates more jobs than business as usual.”

He described the model in “Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries, which was recently published in Energy & Environmental Science. It builds on Jacobson’s previous work by adding new countries, more recent energy consumption data from all regions, and calculations to deal with uncertainty in the future price of battery energy storage, the role batteries will play, and the development of newer technologies such as vehicle to grid. But despite these uncertainties, Jacobson is certain that technological barriers don’t present a major roadblock for the transition.

“(About) 95% of the technologies needed to implement the plans proposed are already commercialized,” he states.

The study also finds that, while jobs would be lost in the mining and fossil fuels segments, 28 million more jobs would be created than lost overall. Only Russia, Canada and parts of Africa are expected to see net job losses as a result, as these regions economies depend heavily on fossil fuels.

Though the study provides clear evidence that a full transition to 100% renewable energy is both technically and economically possible, Jacobson warns that plenty of uncertainty remains.

“Many additional uncertainties exist. One of the greatest is whether sufficient political will can be obtained to affect a transition at the rapid pace needed” he said. “However if political will can be obtained, then transitioning the world entirely to clean, renewable energy should substantially reduce energy needs, costs, air pollution mortality, global warming, and energy insecurity while creating jobs, compared with BAU.”

Author: MARK HUTCHINS

Solar-plus-storage for LED lighting in commercial buildings

Leave a Comment / News / By / August 8, 2022 /

An LED array in a floodlight. Image: Gaurav_Dhwaj_Khadka, Wikimedia Commons

Indian researchers claim that commercial buildings with LED lighting could gain energy independence by installing standalone solar-plus-storage systems. They said a 914.4 kW PV system linked to lithium-ion batteries could be enough to power an entire building with an estimated annual demand of 190,830.7 kWh.

From pv magazine

Scientists from India’s Techno India Salt Lake (TISL) research institute have looked at how standalone photovoltaics linked to lithium-ion battery storage could be used for LED lighting in commercial buildings. They aim to develop a way to use solar power for LED illumination systems in order to reduce electricity costs.

“The scope of the work is to design an effective solar photovoltaic system which would meet the complete energy demand of a proposed business complex without consuming conventional energy supply,” they said.

In “Design of LED lighting system using solar powered PV cells for a proposed business complex,” which was recently published in Scientific Report, the researchers said that commercial PV projects for LED lighting should follow nine steps. They include the identification of a location, the determination of a grid connection point, and the pre-construction documentation and negotiations. The scientists also noted the importance of building infrastructure such as roads and fences, purchasing equipment and logistics, installing mounting structures, building transformer substations, setting up grid connections, and installing monitoring systems.

The academics assumed that the PV system would be built with 6,097 solar modules, with power outputs of 150 W and a total capacity of 914.4 kW. They also assumed the array’s tilt angle to be 49.3 degrees. The PV array design would have 41 stings and 24 modules in series.

In addition, they included an adjustable lithium-ion battery with 512 cells, with 16 connected in series and 32 connected in parallel. For the commercial building complex, the scientists assumed annual electricity demand of 190,830.7 kWh.

“The battery is to be operated at standard room temperature at 24 C in a fixed air-conditioned room,” they said.

The scientists concluded that the standalone energy system would provide complete energy independence for the building. The solar array’s transposition factor could reach a value of 0.98 in the proposed system configuration, they noted.

The modeling also showed that the system’s solar fraction and performance ratio achieved values of 0.740 and 0.569, respectively. The latter measures the quality of a solar plant, independent of location, and the former defines the percentage of the total thermal load satisfied by solar energy. 

“The cost estimation shows that the acquisition and installation cost of PV systems is economically feasible for a typical business complex,” the research team said. ” It is very much possible to use them in individual buildings to attain complete energy independence in the future.”

Author: EMILIANO BELLINI

High-performance aqueous calcium-ion battery

Leave a Comment / News / By / August 8, 2022 / ,

Image: RPI

Researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States have developed a special class of materials for bulky calcium ions, providing pathways for their facile insertion into battery electrodes.

From pv magazine

Against a backdrop of soaring prices and predicted shortfalls of lithium-ion battery materials, the search for inexpensive, abundant, safe, and sustainable battery chemistries has never been more critical. Calcium has been considered in batteries, but the larger size and higher charge density of its ions, relative to lithium, have posed challenges for their insertion into electrode materials.

Now, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States have reported progress in addressing this issue and unlocking the potential of high-performing calcium-ion batteries.

“The calcium ion is divalent, and hence one ion insertion will deliver two electrons per ion during battery operation,” said Nikhil Koratkar, the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer. “This allows for a highly efficient battery with reduced mass and volume of calcium ions.”

However, the larger size and higher charge density of calcium ions relative to lithium impairs diffusion kinetics and cyclic stability, he added. The team has overcome this problem by developing oxide structures containing big open spaces (heptagonal and hexagonal channels). In their work, an aqueous calcium-ion battery is demonstrated using orthorhombic and trigonal polymorphs of molybdenum vanadium oxide (MoVO) as a host for calcium ions.

The researchers have demonstrated that calcium ions can be rapidly inserted and extracted from the material, with these tunnels acting as “conduits” for reversible and fast ion transport. The findings indicate that MoVO provides one of the best performances reported to date for the storage of calcium ions.

Specifically, for trigonal MoVO, a specific capacity of ∼203 mAh g−1 was obtained at 0.2C and at a 100 times faster rate of 20C, an ∼60 mAh g−1 capacity was achieved. The open-tunnel trigonal and orthorhombic polymorphs also promoted cyclic stability and reversibility. These findings were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Calcium-ion batteries might one day, in the not-so-distant future, replace lithium-ion technology as the battery chemistry of choice that powers our society,” says Koratkar. “This work can lead of a new class of high-performing calcium-based batteries that use earth abundant and safe materials and are therefore affordable and sustainable. Such batteries could find widespread use in portable and consumer electronics, electric vehicles, as well as grid and renewable energy storage.”

Author: MARIJA MAISCH

Copyright © Terrenus Energy Pte. Ltd. 2022 All rights reserved.

Copyright © Terrenus Energy Pte. Ltd. 2022 All rights reserved.

Copyright © Terrenus Energy Pte. Ltd. 2022 All rights reserved.