Our Zone: World's largest India's 648-mw single location solar power plant, Kamuthi, Tamilnadu

The plant is set up at Kamuthi, Ramanathapuram, in Tamil Nadu with an investment of Rs 4,550 crore. It is part of the state government's ambitious target of generating 3,000 mw as per the solar energy policy unveiled by the government in 2012," it said.

The entire 648-mw plant is now connected with Kamuthi 400 kv sub-station of TANTRANCO making it the world's largest solar unit at a single location, it said.

Our Zone: World's Largest Floating Solar Plant Planned for Japan

If you’ve ever been out in a boat on a hot summer day, you know that open water gathers a lot of sun and heat. Engineers in Japan are hoping to harness that power with the construction of what will be the planet’s largest floating solar power installation.

2014 Renewable Energy Recap: Oil Down, Solar Up

Japan’s Kyocera Corporation has already leveraged the power of open water with shoreline solar installations like the fixed Kagoshima Nanatsujima plant, pictured above. The new project, however, will be built around 50,000 solar collection modules actually afloat on the Yakamura Dam reservoir.

The modules will cover a water surface area of around 180,000 square meters. Engineers estimate the plant will generate more than 15.6 megawatt hours (MWh) per year. That’s enough to power approximately 4,700 average households.

More numbers: According to the company’s projections, the floating power plant will gather enough solar power from the surface of the dam to offset about 7,800 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The facility will also include an education center adjacent to the plant, to provide classes for local students on environmental issues.

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“When we first started R&D for solar energy in the mid 1970’s, the technology was only viable for small applications such as street lamps, traffic signs and telecommunication stations in mountainous areas,” said Nobuo Kitamura, Kyocera senior executive officer, in press materials for the project.

“Since then, we have been working to make solar energy use more ubiquitous in society. We are excited to work with our partners on this project, taking another step forward by utilizing untapped bodies of water as solar power generation sites.”

via Inhabitat

Credit: Kyocera

Largest Solar Parking Lot in Saudi Arabia

The 10 Megawatts Photovoltaic Carport System is situated at the recently built North Park offices of Saudi Aramco in Dhahran and covers all of the 4,500 parking spaces.

The solar power system was designed to meet the total power demand of Al-Midra Tower of Saudi Aramco. More than 120,000 photovoltaic panels  supplied by the Japanese Thin Film Leader Solar Frontier (Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K.) were laid over the parking areas to serve as parking shades and to produce clean power.

According to government officials, solar energy was part of a $100 billion spending drive planned by Saudi Arabia in 2011 to reduce the oil it uses to generate electricity.

India is now home to the world’s largest solar park.

China’s 200 megawatt Golmud Solar Park previously held the record of the world’s largest solar park.

The 214MW capacity photovoltaic solar park was completed at the cost of $2.3 billion. Currently, the largest single location plant in the world, it is spread over 3,000 acres of mainly wasteland located in India’s western state of Gujarat. The solar power park will continue to expand to a 500MW system, when fully completed by the end of 2014.

The project has boosted India’s renewable energy ambitions, which aims to utilize solar power to account for 3% of national capacity, or 1,000MW by 2013.

India’s objective is to increase renewable energy production, currently at 6%, to at least 15% of the total capacity by 2020.

Gujarat leading solar initiatives

Gujarat, one of the most industrialized state in the country, has come up with comprehensive plans on its renewable energy ambitions, especially solar. The state expects to create 30,000 new jobs in solar energy sector. It is also planning to launch a rooftop solar power plant policy, where people are encouraged to produce their own electricity and earn money by selling the surplus power to the state grid. The aim is to make people self-reliant in power generation.

Residents could also make additional income by renting their rooftops for solar power generation, which the state hopes, will further enhance their income levels.

When fully completed by the end of 2014, the Gujarat Solar Park is expected to generate two thirds of India’s total 900MW solar power production.

The state government plans to develop other such projects in towns like Anand, Banaskantha, Jamnangar, Junagadh, Kutch, Porbandar, Rajkot, Surat and Surendranagar within Gujarat.

Other worldwide solar initiatives

Tunisia has announced the biggest solar power plant project so far. TuNur, a joint-venture company between NurEnergie, a solar power plant developer based in England, and a collection of Tunisian investors, will have a total capacity of a whopping 2,000 MegaWatt, dwarfing both the Gujarat Solar Park and China’s Golmud Solar Park.

TuNur is set to be operational by 2016 and is expected to be a major energy supplier to Europe, powering some 700,000 European households.

There are several other major solar power initiatives in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has built the largest solar power plant in the Middle East to power an entire educational campus in the capital Riyadh. Saudi Electric, the utility arm of the Kingdom, has installed solar panels on Farasan Island and plans to connect to the grid in the following month.

The $600 million Shams 1 solar power plant project in Abu Dhabi is in its completion stages and will be ready by the end of this year. Siemens and Masdar Institute of Science and Technology have partnered in solar technology research and development to enhance the use of photovoltaic (PV) panels in the Middle East region.

IBM’s solar tech is 80% efficient thanks to supercomputer know-how

By borrowing cooling systems used in its supercomputers, IBM Research claims it can dramatically increase the overall efficiency of concentrated photovoltaic solar power from 30 to 80 percent.

Like other concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) collectors, IBM's system at its Zurich laboratory uses a mirrored parabolic dish to concentrate incoming solar radiation onto PV cells. The dish uses a tracking system to move with the sun, concentrating the collected radiation by a factor of 2,000 onto a sensor containing triple-junction PV cells. During daylight hours, each 1-sq cm PV chip generates on average between 200 and 250 watts of electrical power, harnessing up to 30 percent of the incoming solar energy.

Ordinarily, the remaining 70 percent of energy would be lost as heat. But by capturing most of that heat with water, IBM Research says it is able to reduce system heat losses to around 20 percent of the total incoming energy. This results in a bottom-line efficiency of 80 percent for its CPV collector, dubbed HCPVT for High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal. Unlike a regular CPV system, HCPVT delivers its energy in two forms: electricity and hot water.

The thermal system was adapted from IBM Research's 6-teraflop Aquasar supercomputer, which went online at ETH Zurich in 2010. By using water as a coolant, Aquasar consumes three fifths of the energy of a comparable air-cooled machine of the time. Crucially, the hot water could be put to work heating university buildings, reducing Aquasar's carbon footprint to a claimed 15 percent of what would otherwise have been the case.

As with Aquasar, micro-channels between 50 and 100 micrometers in diameter carry water exceptionally close to the source of heat: the processing units in the case of Aquasar, the PV cells here. Thermal resistance is reduced to a tenth of competing systems with larger water channels.

"This allows us to cool with hot water, which sounds a bit strange," IBM scientist Dr. Bruno Michel told Ars during a Skype call. "The photovoltaic chip is around 100º [centigrade] while the coolant is 90º."

To live up to its efficiency, the HCPVT system needs to put its hot water to good use. Though outside the scope of this team's work, IBM Research is also looking at systems which could use the heat by-product to purify water or, somewhat counterintuitively, to cool buildings using adsorption refrigeration.

The team has developed a prototype with a 4×4-cm PV receiver which generates about 1kW of electrical power. It hopes to develop a much larger HCPVT system with a 100-sq m dish and a 25×25 cm receiver, producing 25kW of electrical power and 50kW of thermal power. (Larger PV receivers have gaps between the chips, so you don't gain an additional 200W of electrical power for every square centimeter of receiver you add.)

In a YouTube video, Dr. Michel raises the possibility that these larger HCPVT collectors could one day be used to build solar power stations in, say, the Sahara Desert. According to the team's calculations, covering 2 percent of the area of the Sahara with HCPVT would meet the world's electricity needs, transmission issues aside. Not that you need a desert. Michel told Ars that the system is useful almost anywhere where you have direct solar radiation—Zurich, for instance. "By adding the thermal output we can extend its range of applications compared to CPV," he said.

The HCPVT system has been in development for more than 5 years, initially in collaboration with the Egypt Nanotechnology Research Center.

India's Biggest Solar Plant

India's Biggest Solar Plant : Charanka Village of Patan district making Gujarat shine like a Sun in the map of the world. 2000 hectare 'barren and useless' land of Charanka village was used to develop Solar Park.

The park is already generating 214 MW solar power out of its total power generation capacity of 600 MW. The solar park is expected to save around 8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere and save around 900,000 tonnes of natural gas per year.

Gujarat has been a leader in solar power generation and contributes 2/3rd of the 900 MW power generated in the country.

Is the Ozone Hole Shrinking?

Good news for fans of planet Earth: The seasonal hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was at its second-smallest point in the past 20 years, according to new research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Could this be the first real sign that the ozone layer is recovering after decades of destruction? 

The ozone layer, which includes oxygen and nitrogen as well as ozone, forms a protective belt in the stratosphere about 10 to 18 miles above the Earth, reflecting the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the 1960s and ’70s, the widespread release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals used primarily in spray aerosols, led to a partial breakdown of the layer. 

Since the 1980s, the ozone layer above Antarctica has been especially affected because the region’s frigid temperatures speed up the conversion of CFCs to chlorine, which also accelerates ozone breakdown. Sunshine in the southern spring and summer creates even more ozone-depleting gases, leading to the massive destruction of up to 65 percent of the ozone layer.

While the reduced depletion was due mostly to higher temperatures on the icy continent, scientists are hopeful that the chemical levels have dropped enough that the result is a shrinkage of the ozone hole each season. “If these trends continue for the next few years,” says atmospheric scientist Bryan Johnson of NOAA in Boulder, Colo., “we’ll have confidence things are improving.”

Floating Solar Cells - Napa Vineyard Powered

For the Far Niente Winery located in California's Napa Valley, an acre of land is more valuable than gold, so finding space for solar panels is tough -- and costly. The solution? To float the panels on their irrigation pond, using new photovoltaic technology. "Floating solar", backers say, could be a boon for farming and a range of other industries.

Solar Power Station in Spain works at night - When will India implement like this?

A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night. The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.

In India having sun light around 300 days. Why no one try to implement this?

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Solar Street Lighting System in Gujarat

Solar Street Lighting System in Gujarat

Germany's Sonnenschiff solar city

Germany's Sonnenschiff solar city produces 4 times more energy than it consumes!

World Record German Solar Power Plants

German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour ~ equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity ~ through the midday hours last Friday & Saturday.